INTERNATIONAL LIBRARY OF THE

PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION

BEYOND THE PRESENT AND

THE PARTICULAR
Beyond the Present and
the Particular:
A Theory of Liberal Education
Charles Bailey

Routledge & Kegan Paul

London, Boston, Melbourne and Henley
 First published in 1984
by Routledge & Kegan Paul plc
14 Leicester Square, London WC2H 7PH, England
9 Park Street, Boston, Mass. 02108, USA
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© Charles Bailey 1984

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except for the quotation of brief passages
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Bailey, Charles, 1924–
Beyond the present and the particular.
(International library of the philosophy of education)
Bibliography; p.
Includes index.
1. Education, Humanistic-Philosophy. I. Title.
II. Series.
LC1011.B27 1984 370.11’2 84–4882

British Library CIP data also available

ISBN€0-203-86122-1€Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-7100-9897-9 (c)

This work is dedicated with affection and respect to my colleagues,
past and present, in the Education Department, at
Homerton College, Cambridge.
 Contents

€
€ Epigraph € x
€ Acknowledgments € xi
€
1 € Introduction—Theory and education € 1
€

Part I: €Justification of Liberal Education 7

€

2 € Education and its justification € 8

€ € 2.1 € The nature of justification € 8
€ € 2.2 € Justification and majority opinion € 8
€ € 2.3 € Justification and respect for persons € 9
€ € 2.4 € The justification of education € 10
3 € Types of education € 13
€ € 3.1 € Introduction € 13
€ € 3.2 € Instrumentality and utility € 13
€ € 3.3 € General liberal education € 15
€ € 3.3.1 € Liberation € 16
€ € 3.3.2 € Fundamentality and generality € 17
€ € 3.3.3 € Intrinsically valued ends € 18
€ € 3.3.4 € Reason € 18
4 € The justification of liberal education € 20
€ € 4.1 € Introduction € 20
€ € 4.2 € General liberal education € 20
€ € 4.3 € The general utility justification € 21
€ € 4.4 € The transcendental or presupposition justification € 27
€ € 4.5 € The ethical justification € 30
viiiâ•… Contents

Part II: €Content and Method 35

€

5
€ Some preliminary ideas € 36
€ € 5.1 € Introduction € 36
€ € 5.2 € Fundamentality € 38
€ € 5.3 € Information and knowledge € 39
€ € 5.3.1 € Information € 39
€ € 5.3.2 € Knowledge improperly so called € 40
€ € 5.3.3 € Knowledge properly so called € 41
€ € 5.4 € Truth: what we ought to believe € 44
€ € 5.5 € Understanding € 46
€ € 5.6 € Summary € 49
6 € Three accounts considered € 50
€ € 6.1 € P.H.Hirst and the forms of knowledge € 50
€ € 6.2 € Philip Phenix and the realms of meaning € 61
€ € 6.3 € John White and subjective values € 69
7 € The content of a liberal education € 79
€ Introduction € 79
€ € 7.1 € Underlying ideas and assumptions € 80
€ € 7.2 € The integrative idea € 80
€ € 7.3 € The fundamental logical division € 81
€ € 7.4 € The serving competencies € 83
€ € 7.5 € The convenient and pragmatic divisions € 87
7.5.1 € Divisions within inquiries into ‘goings-on’ identified as
€ € themselves manifestations of intelligence
€ 88
7.5.2 € Divisions within inquiries into ‘goings-on’ identified as not
€ € themselves manifestations of intelligence
€ 96
€ € 7.6 € The place of interest € 99
8 € The methods of a liberal education € 103
€ € 8.1 € Introduction € 103
€ € 8.2 € Teaching for evidence € 104
€ € 8.2.1 € Indoctrination € 107
€ € 8.2.2 € Training and practical activities € 109
 Contentsâ•… ix

€ € 8.3 € Teaching for understanding € 111

€ € 8.3.1 € Explaining € 112
€ € 8.4 € Teaching for care € 116
€ € 8.4.1 € Caring about reason € 117
€ € 8.4.2 € Caring about others € 119
€ € 8.5 € Summary € 122
€

Part III: €Challenges to Liberal Education 123

€

€ € € Introduction to Part III € 123

9 € The challenge of economic utility € 125
€ € 9.1 € The challenge sketched € 125
€ € 9.2 € Criticism of the economic utility challenge € 133
€ € 9.2.1 € The assumptions of non-controversiality € 133
€ € 9.2.2 € The diversion of responsibility € 136
€ € 9.2.3 € The characterization of skills € 137
€ € 9.2.4 € The belittling of knowledge and understanding € 141
€ € 9.3 € Conclusion € 143
10 € The challenge of relativism, ideology and the state € 145
€ € 10.1 € Introduction € 145
€ € 10.2 € Epistemological relativism € 146
€ € 10.3 € Epistemological relativism and liberal education € 153
€ € 10.4 € Ideology € 155
€ € 10.5 € Ideology and liberal education € 162
€ € 10.6 € The state and liberal education € 171
11 € Teachers, assessment and accountability € 174
€ € 11.1 € Teachers as liberal educators € 174
€ € 11.2 € The functions of assessment in liberal education € 177
€ € 11.3 € Teacher accountability and liberal education € 179
€
€ Notes and references € 183
€ Index € 193
 Epigraph

This is what generalising and talking about the past have in common; they are both
departures from that which is present and particular. This common feature is what links
them with rationality. The idea of rationality is that of the ability, given certain present and
particular data, to unite or relate them with other data in certain appropriate ways. This is
the Kantian idea of concepts as unifiers, binders together, creators of a multum in parvo.
Jonathan Bennet, Rationality

In the first place, reasonableness is not exhausted in the exercise of reasoning. A rational
man may well be an intellectual, but he will not be an intellectualist, if this means that
he retreats into his own corner and contents himself with spinning webs. Indeed, to try
to squeeze a normal man into a tiny bed of his own cognitive faculty, and then lop off
whatever will not fit into it, is to stunt him and indeed to kill him…
Secondly, rationality has a far larger field than that of propositions and concepts. It is as
truly at work in judgments of better and worse, of right and wrong, as in those judgments
of analytic necessity to which a narrow convention would confine the name of reason. It
may exhibit itself, for example, in the sanity and good sense with which one appraises the
types of human experience…
Thirdly, rationality extends to reasonableness in conduct. A man would not in our
present sense deserve the name, no matter how clever he was, or how judicious in problems
of value, who was incapable of translating his insights into action.
Brand Blanshard on the rational temper, in Reason and Goodness
 Acknowledgments

This attempt to write a modern characterization and defence of liberal education has been
provoked and stimulated by many encounters over the last two decades. Particularly in
conferences and in-service courses with teachers I have frequently been asked to spell
out the overall view of education in which were lodged my particular views on moral
education, the curriculum, appropriate teacher strategies and attitudes, and so on; and this
has always been difficult to do in any brief but satisfactory way. Without these repeated
challenges the book might never have been written.
A second provocation has been the succession of suggestions from politicians and
others in recent years that seem to me to threaten what is most valuable in education.
It has become increasingly necessary for me to make clear to myself why I see certain
educational content and method to be valuable, and the exact nature of the forces and
arguments threatening these values.
In this undertaking my greatest debt is to those who have wrestled with these problems
before me in recent times, especially Paul Hirst, Philip Phenix and John White, all of
whom have had the courage and wisdom, against the spirit of the age, to address the right
fundamental questions and problems. My criticisms of these three writers, liberal educators
all, will, I hope, be seen as a mark of respect for their endeavours rather than the reverse.
I have been helped and encouraged by many friends and colleagues in conversations
directly and indirectly related to what I have written. I would particularly like to mention
Paul Hirst, who kindly read the first four chapters and encouraged me to continue; Michael
Bonnett, David Bridges, Ray Dalton, Patrick Heffernan and Terry McLaughlin, who were
kind enough to comment on parts of Chapter 6 for me; and John Beck who gave me much
wise advice and also read and commented on Chapters 9 and 10. For this and a great deal
else I am grateful to my Cambridge colleagues. They are not, of course, to blame for what
I have done with, or in spite of, their advice.
I am indebted to the Principal, the Trustees and the Academic Board of Homerton
College for releasing me from my teaching duties for one term in 1982 and another in
1983. Without this generous release, and the readiness of colleagues to undertake some of
my duties, I could not have produced the book.
I am grateful to the following publishers for permission to use the extensive quotations
from their copyright works in my Chapter 6: Routledge & Kegan Paul for quotations
from Paul Hirst’s ‘Knowledge and the Curriculum’, and for quotations from John White’s
Towards a Compulsory Curriculum’; McGraw-Hill for quotations from Philip Phenix’s
‘Realms of Meaning’.
 1
Introduction—Theory and education

Since the aim of this work is to present a comprehensive and coherent theory of liberal
education it is important to be clear in what sense I am talking about theory.
The word ‘theory’, like many other useful words in our language, has more than one
meaning. Some of these meanings are plainly derogatory. For example ‘theory’ can mean
‘an unproved assumption’ or a ‘mere idea’, and there could be little to say about theory if
this was all there was about it. We do not have to look far, however, to see that when we
talk about bodies of ideas like the wave theory of light, the theory of radioactive decay,
or the special theory of relativity, although there is a sense in which we are talking about
assumptions, we are certainly not talking about mere ideas or lightly held assumptions.
We are talking rather about carefully worked out and internally coherent bodies of ideas
that seem to explain observed phenomena over a wide range of experiences. Although not
verified beyond any peradventure of doubt, these theories enable us to make reasonable
predictions and have not been refuted, though critically probed in many ways.
There are two important points to note about these scientific or explanatory theories.
Firstly, they are not, as is sometimes supposed, derived from some piling up of observations
until a theory emerges. They are, instead, the result of imaginative and creative ideas on
the part of a Newton, a Rutherford or an Einstein about how things might be. Only then
can propositions be deduced from the theories which we might try, as Karl Popper1 has
indicated, to refute. The theory stands as an explanation in so far as we fail to refute it. The
theory is, to use Popper’s language, the unrefuted conjecture.
The second point to notice about scientific theories of this kind is that it would be arrant
nonsense to say of such a theory, ‘It is all right in theory but not in practice.’ This would
be nonsense because a failure in practice would amount to refutation. Einstein’s general
theory of relativity, for example, provided propositions about the motion of the perihelion
of Mercury, about the deflection of light in a gravitational field and about the displacement
of spectral lines towards the red, all of which provided opportunities for refutation. Had
the propositions not been found to fit practice in the sense of practical observation, then the
theory would not have been all right but would have been discarded, however elegant the
internal coherence of the mathematics might have been.
I do not want to claim that an educational theory, least of all the theory of liberal education
to be advanced in this work, is a scientific theory in this sense. All I am concerned to
show at the moment is that here is one quite respectable sense of ‘theory’ which anchors it
securely alongside a particular kind of practice.
Another sense of ‘theory’ sees it as related to practice in another way, and since this
is the sense in which I am using the term ‘theory’ in the expression ‘a theory of liberal
education’ I must try to spell it out as carefully as possible. The sense I have in mind is a
combination of the two following meanings from ‘Webster’s International Dictionary’:
2â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
(i) the body of generalisations and principles developed in association with practice in a
field of activity, and
(ii) a belief, policy or procedure proposed or followed as the basis of action.
It will be seen that both of these meanings attach theory clearly to practice and action and
that two complementary ideas are blended together. In the first the idea is that of principles
or rules developed together with the practice of an activity, say medicine, jurisprudence or
education; and in the second there is the idea of the body of beliefs or principles guiding
the practice or action. The two ideas are superficially contradictory in that one seems
to derive theory from the practice whilst the other might be seen as imposing theory on
the practice. This would be to oversimplify, however, since reflection does show that the
two ideas appear to co-exist in theories of practice. In medicine, for example, the actual
practice produces knowledge about the body, about disease, the effect of drugs and surgical
practice and technique. Reflection on the practice raises problems, not only those requiring
laboratory-based research but also those of an ethical or valuative kind not susceptible to
scientific enquiry. The body of knowledge and valuative attitudes so gained in turn guides
practice and can be studied by student practitioners. Not all of the rules and principles
so studied are of a factual, cause-effect kind, though in medicine many of them are. The
important point is that there is an inter-play of practice and reflection upon the practice,
with the reflection becoming more structured, systematic and sophisticated as the body of
knowledge, and the literature in which it is embodied, grows.
Theory in this sense is not so much explanatory, as in the case of scientific theory, rather
it is systematic reflection for a purpose, the continual characterization, delineation and
guidance of a practical activity. The idea that theory, especially educational theory, has a
guiding function, has of course been indicated by others. Paul Hirst, for example, in a well
known paper has written:

Educational theory, like political theory or engineering, is not concerned simply with
collecting knowledge about certain practical affairs. The whole point is the use of this
knowledge to determine what should be done in educational practice.2

Later he says of theory of education:

It is the theory in which principles, stating what ought to be done in a range of practical
activities, are formulated and justified.3

What has not been so commonly noted is that such a reflective theory of practice from
time to time re-defines, re-characterizes, the practice itself. This is certainly true of
educational theory, where what counts as education, or what makes a practice educational
rather than non-educational is one of the questions continually reflected upon and calling
for imaginative conjecture. People like Froebel, John Dewey and A.S.Neill do not simply
perceptively describe the existing educational practice of their time, nor yet do they merely
inform and guide such practice, what they do is to set out to recast that practice, reformulate
it along more justifiable lines. Such thinkers have not just told teachers how they might
better achieve agreed ends, they have questioned the ends and proposed different ones.
 Introduction—Theory and educationâ•… 3
Educational theory, then, in the sense used here, is inescapably linked with practice.
It cannot be the case that the theory is all right only to fail in practice since the proper
relationship to practice is the test on which the theory stands or falls. It is very important,
however, that the relationship of such a theory to practice is not misunderstood and some
possible (indeed common) misunderstandings must be noted.
(i) It does not follow from the idea that theory must properly relate to practice that a
theory is false or bad if it cannot be implemented without disturbing in some way present
practice. Mixed-ability grouping, for example, is not shown to be a false or bad theoretical
idea simply because it cannot be effectively managed with normal methods of class
teaching, since the theory normally carried the accompanying idea that existing methods
of teaching should be disturbed. All this is a consequence of the guiding and/or re-defining
nature of educational theory. As mentioned above, educational theory might tell us how
better to achieve ends already agreed upon, but it might also tell us what is wrong with
the ends we are setting and why and how they might be bettered. There is much confusion
in the interpretation of educational research because of a failure to distinguish between
arguments as to ends and arguments as to means. Relatively straightforward experimental
techniques and correlation studies can usefully inform us about preferable methods if the
desired end is clear and agreed, and if the desired end does not change as the method
changes, and if non-relevant variables can be avoided in the experimental comparisons.
This essential clarity is rarely met with in educational research, however, partly because of
the difficulty of controlling variables, but more importantly because there is nearly always
a different attitude to ends implicit in the adoption of different methods. Consider, for
example, the following pairs of contrasts.

comprehensive organization selective organization

setting by ability mixed-ability grouping
traditional mathematics modern mathematics
formal teaching informal teaching
differentiated subject curriculum integrated curriculum

Any teacher familiar with these juxtapositions will know that they involve not only differing
methodologies, arrangements and techniques, but differing views or conceptions of what
the enterprise is supposed to be about. Setting and mixed-ability grouping, for example,
are not just two opposed ways of achieving the same end, where one might be shown
experimentally to be the better; they are two different conceptions of what should be going
on in the education of children and young people. The issue between them is not therefore
to be determined solely, or even perhaps at all, by experimental and statistical methods of
investigation, but by a much more complex comparison of valuative positions backed by
some kind of philosophical—ethical, conceptual, logical—argument.
Where a theory, in this sense, characterizes or re-characterizes a practice, then by
implication it defines or re-defines what is to count as a skill or a successful method within
the practice. The test is still in the practice, but not necessarily in the existing practice.
4â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
(ii) It does not follow from the idea that theory must properly relate to practice that the
substance of the theory, and changes to the substance of the theory, must only derive from
inside the practice itself. There is no reason why ideas influencing the practice should
not come from outside the practice, from any appropriate bodies of disciplined thought
or even from other practices. Of course such an influential idea, discovery or argument
can come from within the practice upon which it bears, but it does not have to. A doctor
in general practice can have such an idea or make such a discovery, but so can a bio-
chemist or even a metallurgist. A teacher can have an idea influencing educational theory
and thereby educational practice, but so can a philosopher or a psychologist. Ad hominem
arguments against a theoretical point on grounds of the inadequacy of the protagonist’s
teaching experience are common in the educational world, as is the ad populum argument
that something should be done because it is fashionable. Both are clearly fallacious. All that
should count is that the theory should be clear as to the kind of propositions being urged:
whether they are, for example, conceptual or ethical recommendations or scientific, and,
further, that the appropriate kind of justificatory argument should be offered or relevant
criteria of falsifiability should be indicated where the claims are allegedly scientific.
(iii) It does not follow from the idea that theory must properly relate to practice that
the only appropriate tests of a theory are those seeking to refute it in practice. Such tests
are appropriate for theories or parts of theories claiming to be scientific, that is, theories
claiming to state how things are. Examples of such theories, not necessarily true, would be:
(a) Children are encouraged to learn by the promise of extrinsic rewards.
(b) Punishment has an alienating effect, especially on adolescents.
(c) Clever pupils make slower progress in mixed-ability groups than equally clever
pupils in groups of relatively similar ability.
Such tests are not appropriate, however, for claims seeking to guide or re-define practice
which make no claim to be scientific. Claims like:
(d) Liberal education should involve the development of the rational mind in whatever
form it freely takes.
(e) Education should always involve initiation into what is worthwhile and be concerned
with knowledge and understanding.
(f) Teachers should respect their pupils as persons.
It is clear that (a), (b) and (c) differ from (d), (e) and (f) in that the first three claim to state
what is the case, whilst the second three are all about what ought to be the case. Both kinds
of claim or theory guide practice but they do this in two different ways.
The kind of facts claimed in the first three examples guide practice by telling us (if
true) what happens if we do certain things. They do not tell us, of course, that we have to
do that thing. To know that children are encouraged to learn by the promise of extrinsic
reward, for example, does not in itself mean that I should, as a teacher, promise my pupils
extrinsic rewards. There might well be other considerations. It does not even tell me that
I should promise extrinsic rewards to my pupils if I want them to learn, since there may
be other, more desirable ways of encouraging my pupils to learn. There are, therefore, two
appropriate considerations about factual claims, or what we might call fact theories: firstly,
how can they be tested for falsity and, secondly, in what way should they influence my
action? Educational research has tended to be dominated by the methodology of statistics
 Introduction—Theory and educationâ•… 5
and experimentation necessary for answering the first question, and all too little attention
has been given to the important but quite different requirements of the second question.
The second question, indeed, moves into the area of the type of theory exemplified by
(d), (e) and (f) above: the type of claims, or value theories, as to what ought to be, or should
be, done. It is this type of theory that cannot be tested by the statistical and experimental
techniques appropriate to scientific or factual claims. This type of theory is about what is
to be held important, significant and valuable; about what we should do, not in the sense
of what causes us to do things, but in the sense of what reasons we present to ourselves
as justification for doing things. There is a sense in which all such theories are ultimately
moral in nature. A theory of liberal education, for example and to anticipate what is to
follow, must make and justify a number of valuative claims before it can get anywhere near
seeking factual theories to help it. We need to claim, for example:
(i) children should be liberally educated, and
(ii) liberal education should take such and such a form, have such and such aims, satisfy
such and such criteria,
and to argue such claims, justify such claims, before we are in a position to see what factual
information or claims may or may not be relevant.
Such arguments will of necessity be conceptual, logical and philosophical. A theory of
this kind can only be tested by its internal coherence and consistency and by its coherence
with other values we accept, especially those about persons characterized as creatures
who reason and value coherence, consistency and justification. I do not believe myself
that this makes such theories mere matters of opinion when compared with the theories
susceptible to statistical and experimental testing. Critical probing for coherence and
logical consistency is a rigorous, rule-governed activity. Some theoretical structures and
prescriptions are more coherent than others and can be shown to be so. In any case, there
would appear to be no other grounds on which we can rationally choose between one value
theory and another, between one advocated course of action and another. If fact theories,
as I have claimed, can never in themselves tell us what to do in education, and if value
theories are to be thought of as merely arbitrary acts of commitment, then however much
the statistics and experiments are multiplied, our acts and decisions would be ultimately
non-rational.
I have tried to indicate in this section that a theory of liberal education can be a rationally
justifiable theory, but that to be such it must be a critical value theory whose appropriate
tests are those of coherence and consistency. Theories of this kind relate to practice, and
would be worthless without such a relationship, but they relate to it in a special kind of way.
There is perhaps one other point that needs to be made about theories claiming to guide
action and practice before leaving this introduction. Action-guiding theories do not have to
be proven with the certainty attributed to, say, mathematics, and I have already said that in
large part they are not to be tested for truth or falsity in the same way as scientific theories.
In seeking to be guided by the most consistent and coherent justificatory framework the
rational temper requires that we hold our views at any one time critically, that is, subject to
change if we can better them in terms of consistency and coherence; but the rational temper
also requires that at any given time we are prepared to act on the justifications or reasons
that present themselves to us at that time as the best. The twin dangers are, on the one
6â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
hand, ceasing to care about justification and only valuing decisive action, and, on the other,
losing the will to act in a vain search for the perfect justification. It sounds like a clever
philosophical trick to say that anyone who asks, ‘Why bother about justification?’ is already
bothered about justification, but it is nevertheless a profound truth. One can, of course,
simply not bother about justification, but you cannot argue for such a happy abandonment.
Similarly, one can, as a matter of fact, not bother about consistency and coherence, but
you cannot argue for such a rejection. To attempt to argue either of these positions is
already to play the justificatory game where the necessary ground rules are consistency and
coherence. Rationality does not require, then, that in practical matters like education we act
only on theories held to be completely proven, whatever that might mean;but rationality
does require that we act on a systematically related body of beliefs justified by us as the
most consistent and coherent we can arrive at. Indeed, at any given time we might not even
be able to act directly or properly on the basis of an accepted theory because many things
have to be changed to make such direct action in accord with the theory possible. Our theory
is like an ideal. It directs us in our resisting and in our cooperating; and how anyone knows
quite what to resist and what to support without such an ideal or theory puzzles me greatly.
Teachers, then, if they see themselves as general and liberal educators, rather than the
hired instructors of specific and limited vested interests based on economics or politics,
have need of a theory of liberal education of this critical value kind. The rest of this work
seeks to construct such a theory.
 part I
Justification of
Liberal Education
 2
Education and its justification

2.1 The nature of justification

Justification is part of the rational life. I can hold beliefs and perform actions without
seeking to justify either. What I cannot do is argue that I should not justify my beliefs
or my actions, for the simple but important reason that to argue is to seek appropriate
justifications for beliefs, assertions or actions. Those unbothered about justification must
be unbothered about convincing others by argument. It is worth pondering this basic claim
about justification for in a theory of liberal education much can be made to depend upon it.
The point made here is a logical one, but our valuation of justification is also clearly
exemplified in practice. All research, discussion, investigation, debate and decision-
making techniques would be pointless without their underlying assumption of the need for
justification. It might even be claimed that one of the major distinguishing characteristics of
human beings in their fully developed state is their ability and disposition to persuade one
another to belief and action by means of justificatory argument. We consider that we are
falling short of our most commendable characteristic when we resort to other techniques of
persuasion, like force, threats, irrational emotional appeals, manipulatory conditioning and
other influences below the level of consciousness.
Justification, then, is producing reasons for beliefs and actions. This can be at the level
of reasons for a single belief or single act, or at increasingly complex levels of reasons for
complicated sets of beliefs and actions. Justifying education is clearly an example of an
extremely complex kind of justification.

2.2 Justification and majority opinion

Each of us is rational to the extent that our beliefs and actions are justifiable. As Anthony
Quinton has pointed out,1 this is quite separate from any merely psychological feeling of
the indubitability of our beliefs. Similarly, at a social level, an institutional framework like
a system of education can be said to be rational to the extent that it is justifiable in some
sense that goes beyond majority approval.
This, again, is an important point that is easy to be confused about. To say that to
implement an educational ideal in a democracy you must convince a sufficient number of
others, possibly a majority of others, about the ideal, is probably correct. But to say that
the justification of an educational ideal rests upon the number of those convinced about it
is clearly not correct.
Thus to determine educational policy by a collection of opinions, seeking an existing
consensus or majority view as to what we ought to do, is an incorrect basis for policy
because it reduces the complexity of justification to the simplicity of head-counting. What
 Education and its justificationâ•… 9
must be done is to convince enough people of the consistency, coherence and validity
of an argued framework of claims and beliefs constituting a justificatory theory. One’s
democratic commitment is satisfied by the recognition that implementation will need some
kind of majority acceptance. Such a commitment does not have to suppose that the will of
the majority is the determinant of what is right.
Indeed, there is a close connection between rationality, democracy and justification.
Democracy, it has well been argued,2 is the name of those forms of government least
offensive to the rational person. The rational person supports democracy mainly because it
provides the greatest hope that what is reasonable will prevail. When the majority becomes
tyrannical, when it ignores minorities, when the actions of the majority become irrational,
then the spirit of democracy has gone. Democracy is not synonymous with majority
dominance, and it is one of the fallacies of our age to suppose that it is.
Justification, then, is the production of reasons for beliefs and actions, not the collection
of supporters; it is a matter of reason rather than rhetoric, of conviction rather than
persuasion. Justification is required as a feature of the attempt to make human life rational,
to make our activities and beliefs part of an intelligible and coherent whole, to understand
what we are about.

2.3 Justification and respect for persons

To respect someone as a person is, primarily, to acknowledge that human being as a centre
of rational purpose and intention, a reasoning being, worthy of being treated accordingly.
There are many implications of this but the point I wish to draw attention to here is the
relationship between the idea of person, characterized as a reasoning being, and that of
justification characterized as the reasoned support of belief and action. The connection lies,
on the one hand, in the fact that persons are creatures for whom justification matters, and,
on the other, in the fact that justification is a unique institution of persons.
This network of ideas needs further consideration, both because of its intrinsic importance
and because it will perform considerable service in the arguments of this book. To start
with, there is the strange idea, strange but true, that the person for whom justification is
important is both bound and free, as Kant pointed out long ago.3 Justification binds because
reasoned support for beliefs or actions cannot be made up of any old ideas that come to
mind. Reason must be reason. Reason is subject to certain rules of coherence and logic in
order to be reason at all. But reason in the form of justification frees or liberates because
in presenting to himself data from beyond the present and the particular man frees himself
from the restrictions of immediate response to stimuli, the restrictions which appear to
govern the actions of the rest of the animal kingdom. Man uses stored knowledge, both
from his own memory and from all the books and other artefacts constituting Karl Popper’s
‘third world’,4 and this, together with his imaginative conjectures and hypotheses about
how things might be, liberates him from the tyranny of the immediate present. He also
uses rules, laws, principles, concepts and classifications which enable him to transcend the
meaningless barrage of isolated particulars. In referring to these extending facilities of the
mind, reflecting as it were, man engages in the characteristically human activity of reasoning
about his beliefs and actions. He justifies his beliefs and actions; and in doing what is
justifiable and believing what is justifiable he both binds himself and exercises his freedom.
10â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
The idea of justification enters, of course, into the consideration of how persons should
treat persons, and this in two ways. The first is reasonably obvious, namely, that the
treatment of persons by persons always calls for justification. Within the limits imposed by
the necessities of the material world I can do what I like to things, but I cannot do what I
like to persons. I have to justify what I do to persons and perhaps also what I do to creatures
like animals who are nearer to being humans than mere things, or at least can be seen as
sharing some important characteristics like susceptibility to pain. Education, at the very
least, involves doing things to persons, influencing their behaviour and beliefs, and thus
involves actions calling for justification. If this is reasonably obvious the second way in
which justification is connected with the treatment of persons is rather more involved. This
consideration derives from the fact that persons are reasoners and justifiers and this has to
be borne in mind in persons’ treatment of persons. This can be seen, I think, if we compare
the treatment of persons by persons with the treatment of animals by persons, or at least our
normal moral consideration of such treatment.
Because animals can suffer pain, and because persons know that animals can suffer
pain, persons have moral scruples about their treatment of animals which involve ideas
like not causing unnecessary suffering to animals. We do not, however, have the same
scruples about failing to reason with animals or failing to explain things to them, basically
because we do not believe that animals can reason or understand explanations. In short,
our moral attitude to animals is determined by what we believe to be the case about them,
by our conceptualization of them. We distinguish living things from non-living things;
among living things we distinguish between those we believe to be sensitive and those
not; and our moral attitudes towards these creatures is very largely determined by these
conceptualizations.
What persons know about persons, however, is very complex. We know that persons are
living beings and can suffer pain, so some of the same scruples that arise in regard to our
treatment of animals arise also in regard to our treatment of one another. Additionally we
know that persons are reasoners and justifiers, and we have moral scruples about failing
to treat persons as reasoners and justifiers. Respecting persons involves justifying our
treatment of them, as does respecting animals, but no treatment that failed to recognize
persons as actual or potential reasoners and justifiers would be justifiable. Justification thus
enters into the idea of respect of persons in two ways with a complex relationship.
This idea relates importantly to the justification of educational practices and policies.
Education involves the influencing of some people by others and therefore calls for
justification; but, because the subjects of education are persons, no educational practice
will be justifiable that fails to recognize these subjects as actual or potential reasoners and
justifiers. Much of what follows will be an expansion of this one idea.

2.4 The justification of education

We can talk meaningfully about the justification of education, ask meaningful questions
about how education is to be justified, because in its most central usage the word ‘education’
picks out the influence of one or more persons upon one or more other persons. It is true
that we talk about self-education, and we also talk about the educative effects of non-
persons like natural scenery or works of art. These usages, however, surely would not have
 Education and its justificationâ•… 11
gained meaning without being analogical extensions of the central case. I know what is
meant by ‘educated by nature’ because, and only because, I know what it is to be educated
by another person. Any attempt to be clear about education, then, should not be led astray
by analogical extensions, but keep to the central case and normal usage of the word.
At the very least, to educate someone is to influence them in some kind of way, to
change the person’s behaviour or belief or state of mind. We can push this analysis a
little further by claiming, as Richard Peters has done,5 that an influence characterized as
educational is always valuable or worthwhile in some sense, or at least supposed to be so
by the educator. For the educator to say of the same circumstances, ‘I am educating this
person but what I am doing is not valuable or worthwhile,’ would sound to most of us
downright contradictory. Peters has also argued, though somewhat more prescriptively and
controversially, that an influence characterized as educational must involve knowledge
and understanding in some sense. This, I believe, is to confuse an important part of the
characterization and justification of one kind of education with the basic characterization
of any kind of education. All usages of ‘education’ seem to involve worthwhile or valuable
influence upon behaviour and belief, or, in some still more basic instances, upon nurture
and growth; but knowledge and understanding in the honorific senses that Peters wants to
attribute to them are not necessarily involved in all these instances and usages.
What is brought out by the claim that educational influences must be valuable or
worthwhile is the important idea that they must be justifiable, and it makes discussion of
the justification of education clearer if we accept from the start that there might be more
than one kind of justification for more than one kind of education, rather than a kind of
blanket or monolithic justification for all kinds of education whatever.
That there are different kinds of education is manifested by the variety of practices
we call educational and the variety of institutions in which such practices take place. The
‘Oxford English Dictionary’ notes that the word ‘education’ is often used ‘with limiting
words denoting the nature or the predominant subject of the instruction or kind of life for
which it prepares, as classical, legal, medical, technical, commercial, art education’. We can
add to this list, of course, the widely held idea of a liberal education which we shall want to
explore in some detail. It seems from all this that the only point of any substance that can be
made conceptually about the idea of educating is that education is always connected with
something held to be valuable or worthwhile in some kind of way, and that quite separate
issues of justification are raised by each separate claim that something is worthwhile and
therefore can provide the basis for an education. In spite of all that has been written about
it to seek a justification for education as such is a bit like seeking a justification for ‘living’
or for ‘development’ when these are uncharacterized or unqualified in any way.
The attempts of R.S.Peters to provide both an analysis of the concept of education and a
justification for education are instructive here. Peters has always been attracted to the idea
of an honorific conception of education, characterized in terms of both worthwhileness and
knowledge and understanding and justified by its connection with the good and civilized
life. Critics were quick to point out that the analysis itself was unduly prescriptive, that
whilst it might well be argued that this is what education ought to be like it was quite another
thing to claim that this was how the word ‘education’ was commonly used, for patently it
was not. Peters then accepted that there was a more general concept of education connected
with any kind of basic child-rearing, but claimed that the more honorific concept of ‘the
educated man’ emerged in the nineteenth century and that this was his main concern.6
12â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
These attempts have generated much criticism and debate,7 with the basic difficulty
lying in the attempt to delineate different concepts of education. Surely these problems can
be avoided, and the more substantial problems more clearly displayed, if we accept that
the concept of education, when unqualified, does simply pick out the idea of the rearing
and developing of young persons. The ‘Oxford English Dictionary’ notes that the purely
physical connotation ‘to rear, bring up children or animals by supply of food and attention to
physical wants’ is now obsolete, and we can accept that. The next meaning given, however,
‘To bring up young persons from childhood so as to form their habits, manners, intellectual
and physical aptitudes’, allows for both the general and the large number of specific cases
and also allows us to characterize the particular kind of ‘bringing up’ we wish to justify.
To sum up the connection between justification and education, then, we must note that it
is never education as such that needs justifying, but always some particularly characterized
kind of education. To put this another way, we might say that education, in its most general
sense, can be taken to mean something like developing young people in some worthwhile
way. What then needs showing is that any particular kind of development we have in mind
is worthwhile, that is, that it is justifiable. Of course we might want to say that some kinds
of development are more worthwhile than others, as indeed they are; but there is no need to
do this by attempting to monopolize the term ‘education’ for such developments only, for
we can do all we need in our justificatory arguments.
In the next chapter I shall attempt to characterize a general liberal education before
returning to the problem of justifying it in Chapter 4.
 3
Types of education

3.1 Introduction
If education in its broadest and least controversial sense is to be thought of as facilitating the
development of others, usually the young, in some worthwhile way, as I have claimed, then
clearly there can be many kinds of assisted development all quite properly called education
in some qualified way. I want to claim that a liberal general education is a special kind of
education having characteristics and justifications of its own which distinguish it from
all other kinds of education. I shall not in this chapter spell out all these characteristics,
justifications and distinctions, for all that will occupy several chapters. I must say enough
here, however, to separate the idea of a liberal general education from all other kinds of
education. The basis of the division is clear and simple; it is the implications that are
complicated and will need expansion and explanation in further chapters.

3.2 Instrumentality and utility

We speak of one thing or action being instrumental to something else when we use the
thing or action to produce something else that we value. Most people do not value washing
machines, for example, in themselves, but rather because they value the saved time, or the
more efficiently washed clothes. There are great numbers of things we try to possess and
things we try to do that are valued instrumentally, that is, valued not for themselves but for
what we can do with them, what they lead on to, what they are useful for or have utility for.
Things we can learn can clearly be like this. I can learn:
to fill out an income-tax form
to focus a microscope
to use an index
to calculate
to mount a butterfly
to read
to write
to start a motor-cycle
and so on.
All these are useful things to be able to do. More correctly they can be useful under certain
circumstances, and this is an important characteristic of all instrumentality. To say of A
that it is instrumental to B is also to say that we only value A if we value B. Focusing a
microscope is of no use to me unless I want to examine micro-objects. Mounting butterflies
is not a useful skill to one uninterested in collecting dead butterflies. We sometimes say
14â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
that the value of instrumental things or activities is extrinsic to the thing or activity, as
contrasted with the intrinsic value of some thing or activity we value for itself rather than
for a purpose extra to it.
If the extrinsic value of instrumental things or activities is one characteristic of importance
to note about them another is that instrumentality or usefulness can be very specific and
limited or it can be very general and wide. Compare, for example, knowing how to mount
a butterfly with knowing how to read, or knowing how to focus a microscope with knowing
how to write. Some things are useful in a very limited context, and one would want to be
quite sure of the need before making the effort to acquire the skill. Other things, like reading,
writing, looking after one’s own health, communicating with others, whilst still instrumental,
are of such widespread and multivarious utility as to appear like necessities for all human
beings, and present no difficulties about predicting future usefulness. Any instrumental
learning can be considered under the aspect of the specificity or generality of its utility.
One important characteristic of a general liberal education, to be explored more fully later,
is that it should always be concerned with the more generally useful rather than the less.
Not only particular items of learning but whole educational enterprises can be
considered from the point of view of utility or instrumental value. I mean such things as
legal education, medical education, the education and training of teachers or the education
and training of army officers. Any kind of specific vocational preparation could fall under
this classification and can be marked clearly off from that of a general liberal education.
Little needs to be said about the justification of these essentially vocational forms of
education. The justifications would derive from the acknowledged usefulness of, say, the
law, medicine or teaching and some assurance of the non-harmfulness of the vocation
in a social or moral sense. Some additional comments, however, might anticipate future
arguments.
Vocational preparation must always be connected with factual knowledge about the
likely need for such vocations. The younger the person being considered for vocational
preparation the more difficult it is to predict the usefulness of that preparation for that
person for any continuous stretch of that persons’s life. Even if it can be shown that there
will be a social need for some people to practise a given vocation it does not follow that
all people will need to practise it, and the direction of young people into such vocational
preparation becomes unjustifiable.
Another point that is sometimes made about directly vocational education is that most
examples of such education contain highly generalizable elements, some elements of
science in medical education for example, or the psychological studies undertaken by most
preparing teachers. Whilst it is true that such generalizable elements undoubtedly appear
in otherwise specific training programmes, it does not follow that vocational education
can be an appropriate ‘vehicle of general education’, to use the language of the Newsom
Report.1 This is partly because the general elements are normally eclipsed actually and in
the minds of students by the directly specific requirements, but also and more importantly
because the general elements are always considered with reference to the specifically
vocational demands of the course. Indeed, teachers and lecturers on vocational courses are
sometimes criticized when the teaching goes beyond the directly relevant. That an example
of vocational education contains within itself one or more elements of learning that are
 Types of educationâ•… 15
very general in their utility does not, therefore, provide in itself a justification for including
such a vocational course in general or liberal education.

3.3 General liberal education

A general liberal education stands in contrast to all kinds of vocational education, but not
in quite as simple a way as is sometimes claimed. It is not simply the case that vocational
education is concerned with the useful and general liberal education is not; that vocational
education has extrinsic value whilst the value of general liberal education is intrinsic, or that
vocational education is concerned with means and general liberal education is concerned with
ends. To make any or all these claims would be near the truth, certainly, but would fail to make
a number of important qualifications and reservations and thereby confuse the argument.
Let me try to characterize what I mean by a general liberal education without submitting to
the stranglehold of a definition or, at the moment, considering problems of justification.
A general liberal education is characterized most centrally by its liberating aspect
indicated by the word ‘liberal’. First and foremost a general and liberal education must
be aimed at liberating the person who receives it. What it liberates the person from is the
limitations of the present and the particular. The liberally educated person is capable of
responding to the stimuli of his present and particular environment in a way that stands in
the starkest possible contrast to animal reaction. Most human beings become capable of
some escape from the tyranny of the present and the particular, but the extent of this escape
is the measure of the liberal education they have received.
The liberating elements of such an education are characterized by fundamentality and
an associated generality. The intuitive idea here is that the more fundamental is an aspect
of knowledge and understanding I have, the more general are its applications and the more
liberated I am in terms of choices I can make and perspectives I can bring to bear. All this,
of course, needs expansion and illustration but I am trying here to provide a sketch before
making blueprints.
As well as its concern for the fundamental and the general a general liberal education is
also concerned to locate activities in aspects of knowledge and understanding which can
become ends in themselves; activities and aspects of knowledge and understanding, that is,
likely to have intrinsic value rather than only capable of serving as means to other ends.
Lastly, but perhaps most profoundly, a general liberal education can only achieve these
characteristics of liberation, fundamentality, generality and concern for intrinsically valued
ends, I believe, if it is concerned with involvement in a life of reason. The connection here,
I hope to be able to show, is not a contingent one but a necessary one. A general liberal
education is necesssarily what Professor Hirst has called the development of the rational
mind2 simply because nothing else could be so liberating, fundamental or general.
Even this brief sketch should reveal why the distinction between vocational and liberal
education, clear and important though it is, should not be oversimplified. Part of what is
being said about a general liberal education, for example, is that in a special sense it must
be more useful than any specific vocational education that can be given. Some expansion
of this brief sketch is now called for.
16â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
3.3.1 Liberation
The idea of a liberal education has always been associated with the notion of freedom
or liberty in some sense or another of those much abused terms. It is not clear, however,
that the sense has always been the one used here. Aristotle, to take a famous example,
distinguished the education fit for free men from that fit for slaves and artisans. Professor
Hirst has pointed out, rightly I think, that in spite of the distant social setting of Aristotle’s
remarks they pointed to four characteristics of a liberal education in some universal
sense: the non-mechanical nature of such an education and the demand for the exercise of
man’s higher intellectual abilities; the non-utilitarian significance; the breadth or absence
of narrow specialization; and the intrinsic motivation of the studies. Aristotle, however,
seemed to see all this as characterizing an education fit for free men, rather than as helping
young persons, as yet restricted, to become free.3
Few today would want to defend a special kind of education for some who are alleged
to be free and another kind for those who are in some sense unfree, though certain aspects
of the grammar-school and secondary-modern school division dominant in England in the
1950s and 1960s were seen by some as approaching this kind of dichotomy. The kind of
connection I see as existing between freedom and a liberal education is quite different. This
can be spelled out in two different but related ways.
Firstly, all children are born into specific and limited circumstances of geography,
economy, social class and personal encounter and relationship. There is a great deal of
evidence from psychologists and sociologists to show how profound are the influences of
these special circumstances. I shall return to a consideration of some of these influences
later. The point here is a simpler one, namely that education can obviously be of a kind
that will entrap or confirm a young person in the limiting circumstances of his birth, or it
can be of a kind that will widen his horizons, increase his awareness of choice, reveal his
prejudices and superstitions as such and multiply his points of reference and comparison.
Whether or not an education or part of an education is to be judged as general and liberal
can be determined in a rough kind of way by its likelihood of having the second rather than
the first of these consequences. This is one meaning of what it is to liberate a person, by
means of education, from the restrictions of the present and the particular.
The second way in which the connection between liberty and a liberal education can be
described is at once more complicated and more profound and far-reaching in its implications.
It is concerned more with what the liberally educated person is released for, as contrasted
with the sense just described, which emphasizes what such a person is released from. What
the liberally educated person is released for is a kind of intellectual and moral autonomy,
the capacity to become a free chooser of what is to be believed and what is to be done, a
free chooser of beliefs and actions—in a word, a free moral agent, the kind of entity a fully-
fledged human being is supposed to be and which all too few are! The word ‘autonomy’
is not lightly chosen here. The idea is one of self-government, not romantic anarchy. The
supposition is that by knowledge and reason one can come increasingly to understand the
forces acting upon one both inside the psyche and outside in the social framework and
thereby make oneself independent of them. We do not have to be determined in our actions
and our beliefs by our social-class origins, the introjected perversities of our super-egos
or by social or individual conditioning of whatsoever irrational form. We can break what
Erich Fromm4 was pleased to call the incestuous ties of clan and soil.
 Types of educationâ•… 17
Stated like this, of course, the idea is a mere assertion of faith in an ideal. An ideal
at that which many see as an outmoded attachment to eighteenth-century enlightenment,
blind to the romantic reaction, the insights of depth-psychology, the revelations of two
world wars, rampaging and alienating technological growth and the power of social and
political pressure and change. Whether in all this welter of ideas we have ever succeeded in
replacing the ideal of the free and rational moral agent by anything better is most doubtful.
Whether anything else can stand in the stead of reason as an anchor point for a theory
of liberal education we have yet to examine. For the present I am saying that a liberal
education liberates from the tyranny of the present and the particular and liberates for the
ideal of the autonomous, rational, moral agent. What all that fully means and implies I
have yet to spell out. I am not claiming that this is an ideal that all will fully realize, even
if to fully realize rational autonomy made any sense. What is important is to know which
way to go.

3.3.2 Fundamentality and generality

The knowledge and understanding to be gained in a liberal education must be as fundamental
as possible in order to have the generality of application that is more rather than less
liberating. The term ‘fundamental is used here in the sense of necessary foundation, and
stands opposed to particular items of knowledge that might be useful in themselves but
upon which nothing or not much can be built. The idea is perhaps more easily seen by
example. Pupils might learn how to make toffee using a prespecified recipe and with exact
instructions about what to do; but they might, alternatively, learn by experimenting the
properties of sugar when heated to different temperatures. The latter knowledge is more
fundamental, underlies more possibilities of application and is therefore more generalizable
and more liberating than the former which, though pleasant to know, is very particular
and limited in application to mere repetitions. Again, pupils might learn by specific but
unreasoned instruction to open doors for other people; but they might, instead, learn by
reason and discussion general principles of helpfulness and cooperation. The latter is more
fundamental than the former or any particular instruction of that kind. Principles are more
fundamental than the particulars subsumed under them, though the principles may, in some
cases, have to be arrived at by a study of particular cases; and those general clusters of rules
and principles which we refer to as disciplines are more fundamental than any isolated
facts or items of knowledge unrelated to anything else.
I shall, in due course, need to outline in some detail what content we might give to
liberal education in order to satisfy this criterion of fundamentality. My concern at the
moment is simply and briefly to characterize the idea. One reservation, however, needs
to be made. Fundamentality does not have much to do with what is sometimes called
‘the basics’. People who use this phrase seem usually to mean something like basic
arithmetic and basic literacy. Now it is true that these are of fundamental value and wide
generality of application and would certainly be part of a liberal education—but they
would only be a part of it. There are many other fundamental aspects of knowledge and
understanding, some of them scorned by those who would urge the ‘basics’ upon us, for
which we shall want to justify a place in our account of liberal education.
18â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
3.3.3 Intrinsically valued ends
Ours seems to be an instrument-dominated society. The point is often made that we talk
continually of technological growth, of increasing wealth and of a raised standard of
living without much accompanying discussion of what criteria govern the acceptability of
technology, what the wealth is to be for, and what is to measure a standard of living in terms
other than per capita income or gross national product in money terms. Instruments serve
ends; for wealth or technology to become ends in themselves is clearly a perversion of human
endeavour. In earlier times, with relatively limited technologies, perhaps this was easier to
realize, at least for some, but the prevalence of poverty and the capacity of technology to
relieve it meant that technological advance was eagerly sought and the concept of progress
became elevated to an almost unchallengeable position. This idea is now being questioned
by a variety of people, not only in western societies but in less developed countries less
sure than they were that to attain western technology is an unmixed blessing.
Education occupies a peculiar position in these debates. On the one hand education
can clearly be viewed instrumentally on a small or grand scale. It is fashionable at this
time in England to point to the part education can play in the wealth creation process,
by familiarizing pupils with technology, helping them understand and to be favourably
disposed towards industry and to appreciate the importance of wealth creation. Teachers
are sometimes blamed for not inducing more able pupils to take up the study of science
rather than of the arts. All this is to view education as instrumental. Educators, however,
have long seen their task as not solely concerned with these instrumentalities but also with
things worthwhile in some way in themselves, with the intrinsically worthwhile. These kinds
of things are most readily to be seen in the arts: listening to and creating music, enjoying
and creating works of art and literature, engaging in physical and aesthetic activities. But
inquiry and discovery in the sciences can also be intrinsically worthwhile if it is concerned
with the search to know and to understand for the sake of knowing and understanding and
not necessarily for utilitarian application. Certainly there is a danger of oversimplifying
this distinction, as R.S.Peters has pointed out,5 but the distinction is nevertheless there,
characterizing perhaps more the attitude with which studies are approached than simply
the content of studies. One of the things that wealth can do in a society is to make these
intrinsically valuable delights, creations and discoveries possible for all. Liberal education,
in the sense of its concern for the intrinsically worthwhile, can only become available for
all in a relatively wealthy society, that is true, but if a society becomes solely concerned
with wealth production and no longer sees education as concerned with ends, then all
becomes caught up in a pointless and particularly vicious and alienating circle.
A liberal education, then, will be characterized by its capacity to liberate pupils from the
pressures of the present and the particular, and it will do this by its concentration upon what
is fundamental and generalizable. It will also embody a concern for activities, both mental
and physical, that are valued ends rather than, or at least as well as, valued instruments.

3.3.4 Reason
My final assertion, in a sketch of a liberal general education, was that all of the above is
best facilitated by a central concern with reason, by what Professor Hirst has called ‘the
development of the rational mind’.6 One can accept Professor Hirst’s general point here
 Types of educationâ•… 19
without necessarily wanting to agree with all that he makes follow from this, or, indeed, to
agree entirely with his account of what constitutes having a rational mind.
Part of the general point is that it is only reason that can liberate one from the present
and the particular. There is a sense in which to be able to refer some immediate stimulus to
memory, to imagination, to anticipation of consequences, to relevant rules and principles
and information that can be brought to mind and then decide how to respond, is both to be
rational and to be liberated from the restrictions of immediate stimulus-response reactions.
To point this up by contrast this is just what feelings and allied affective states cannot do. To
act on feeling alone is to react: to be trapped in a particular response immediately following
a particular feeling. The intuitive ideas that we are swept by emotion, that we lose our
temper, are overcome by feeling, and so on are all indications of the idea that it is only reason
that can free us from the compulsion of immediate reaction if it is sufficiently developed.7
There is a peculiarity about reason that is associated with the idea of autonomy. For
me to act on reason or to hold a belief on reason, that is to act or believe rationally, the
reason must be my own. I must come to see for myself why it is right to believe this or do
that. On the other hand, for me to believe or act on reason is not simply to do or believe
what I like. The oddity here is that reason must originate and operate in individual minds
yet also operate on rules and principles that go beyond individual minds because they are
publicly shared. To be rational is partly to operate an individual skill or corpus of skills, but
also partly and importantly to become initiated into public bodies of knowledge in which
statements gain meaning by their location within clusters of other statements related in
publicly organized ways and tested for truth in publicly organized ways.
This is the other part of the general point made by Professor Hirst that one is bound
to agree with. To develop a rational mind is to come to be able to reason, to know and to
understand, within a limited number of different ways in which true propositions can be
publicly articulated. Hirst has suggested the forms that these different ways of knowing
might take, but the significance of his general thesis can be accepted without necessarily
agreeing with his specific suggestions. The point I want to stress here is that there is a
strange public-private link in the life of reason and both poles have to be developed in a
liberal education. There is reason to believe that the public side of knowledge has been
overemphasized in both theoretical writing and in the practical activities of schools, whilst
what I am calling the private side, the side of the individual knower or reasoner, has been
neglected. We must return to this, but at this stage of the argument at least one can agree
wholeheartedly with Hirst when he says:

to characterize the objectives of education in relation to the development of rationality is

certainly to put at the very centre of what is pursued those forms of knowledge and belief in
which we make sense of our experience. It is necessarily by means of knowledge, if not by
knowledge alone, that fancy gives place to a recognition of fact, that irrational wishes give
place to reasonable wants, and that emotional reactions give place to justifiable actions.8

Liberal education, then, achieves through the development of reason the liberation from the
present and the particular; it focuses upon the fundamental and the generalizable; and it has
concern for the intrinsically worthwhile rather than for the solely utilitarian.
 4
The justification of liberal education

4.1 Introduction
In Chapter 2 it was argued that it did not make sense to talk of justifying education as such,
partly because we already build into the notion of education the idea of some worthwhile,
that is to say justifiable, influence being exerted upon someone’s behaviour and beliefs.
There is something odd about seeking a justification for exerting a justifiable influence!
Nevertheless, it was also argued that when we claim that an influence is worthwhile we need
to show that it is worthwhile, and this is where justification comes in. Thus justifications
will vary according to the kinds of worthwhile influences that are embodied in various
kinds of education. In particular justifications called for in education of a vocational,
utility or instrumental type will differ, not only one from another, but collectively from the
justification required for a liberal general education.
Justifications for any kind of instrumental education will be of three kinds: firstly, the
justification of the end to which the instrumentality is directed; secondly, a demonstration
of the efficiency or effectiveness of the proposed education in preparing people for the
justified activity, profession or whatever; and thirdly, some consideration of the likelihood
of the person being prepared actually ever engaging in the justified activity, profession or
whatever it is that he is being prepared for. For example, I justify engaging John Brown in
a particular form of medical education if I can show:
(a) the general desirability of practising medicine;
(b) that this particular form of education will effectively prepare someone to practise
medicine; and
(c) John Brown is likely to practise medicine if successfully medically educated.
I propose to say no more about justifying instrumental education here except to note that
one of the main reasons for not engaging pupils in ordinary schools in vocational education
is the difficulty of satisfying the third condition of justification. We just do not know,
in most cases, what type of vocational preparation any one pupil really needs. This is a
simple, but vitally important, consideration if we are not to engage in a shocking waste of
pupils’ time and a deplorable betrayal of wrongly engendered expectations.

4.2 General liberal education

Justifying a liberal general education occupies a different framework altogether. Why
should we engage children and young people in the type of education briefly characterized
in the previous chapter, and which I am referring to as a liberal general education? We
cannot justify this type of education by reference to something else that it is instrumental
 The justification of liberal educationâ•… 21
to in any specific sense, because it does not have this kind of specific instrumentality. This
is not to say that a liberal general education is not useful in any sense at all. I shall want to
argue, inter alia, that it is precisely its general and fundamental utility that provides part of
the justification for a liberal general education. A second justification comes from the way
in which a liberal general education, as described here, is related to the very conception of
justification itself. This is the justification used by Professor Hirst, but he deals with it rather
briefly and it is an important enough argument to warrant rather more extended consideration.
Thirdly, I believe there to be powerful moral reasons why a state wealthy enough to do
so should extend to all its young subjects an involvement in liberal general education.
These justifications, as I explained in Chapter 2, constitute reasons for believing that
we should provide a liberal general education for our young people and, of course, reasons
for actually doing so. They are justifications in the area of practical reason, and, like
other reasons for action, they have to be seen as making a package of reasons for doing
something that is a better package than any that can be assembled for doing something
different within the same area of choice. The arguments to be offered, then, support the
assertion that if a universal compulsory education service is maintained by the adults of a
national community for their young the education provided for all within it should be of the
liberal general type. Schools might, of course, offer additional types of education for some
or all pupils, but this would be based on quite separate arguments that would have to be
provided and not confused with the overriding arguments for a liberal general education.
Before engaging in the three main sets of justificatory argument it is perhaps worth
listing again in summary form the characteristics of a liberal general education in the form
argued for here. A liberal general education is to be characterized in four ways:
(i) By its capacity to liberate a person from the restrictions of the present and the partic-
ular—it is liberal.
(ii) By its involvement of pupils in what is most fundamental and general—it is funda-
mental and general.
(iii) By its involvement of pupils in intrinsically worthwhile ends and not only means.
Intrinsically worthwhile activities may turn out to be useful for other purposes, but
they are not entered into for that purpose—it is intrinsically worthwhile.
(iv) By its involvement of pupils in reason and the development of the rational mind—it
is rational.
Why, then, should we involve pupils in any education so characterized?

4.3 The general utility justification

To offer as a justification for a liberal general education that it has the most general usefulness
of any education that could be provided sounds odd for an education that we are claiming
is to be concerned with the intrinsically worthwhile. This is especially so in the light of
the contrast that has been drawn between a basically non-instrumental education on the
one hand and a variety of specifically instrumental educations on the other. Nevertheless, I
believe the justification can be made and is an important one.
The first point to be made is that the general utility of a liberal general education is not
sought or intended but is rather a logically necessary consequence of an education having
the characteristics described above. This is because of the characteristic of fundamentality.
22â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
The more successful we are in involving pupils in knowledge and understanding that is
genuinely fundamental the more generally useful this will be because what it means for
the knowledge and understanding to be fundamental is precisely that it underlies all more
particular choices and decisions. The argument would be that we involve pupils in what
is fundamental because fundamental understanding of human experience is intrinsically
worthwhile, but in doing this we are necessarily providing pupils with the knowledge and
understanding that has the most general relevance and utility for anything they are likely
to want to do.
Two questions now arise: why should I claim that fundamental knowledge and
understanding is intrinsically worthwhile, and, secondly, is it possible to show more
concretely the relationships between fundamental knowledge and understanding and the
possible particular choices and activities that it underlies? The first is difficult to answer
fully without involving justifications yet to be discussed, and the second is difficult without
an account of the content and substance of a liberal general education to be dealt with in
Chapter 7. Nevertheless some attempt must be made to give at least preliminary answers to
these questions. The reader is reminded once again that we are gathering together a package
of supported reasons and ideas, not trying to assemble an inappropriately watertight proof.
The answer to the first question, then, is to do with what persons ought to value as the
ends to which all usefulness is directed. It is suggested that among those ends, importantly,
should figure the rnost fundamental knowledge and understanding of the possibilities of
human action in, and experience of, the world persons find themselves in. One cannot
avoid a concern for ends since all instrumentalities are meaningless without a consideration
of how they lead to valued ends. One cannot, as it were, simply engage in useful activities,
since activities can only be useful or not in relation to some valued end. It is probably true
that in the early history of mankind knowledge and understanding were purely instrumental
to very basic and primitive ends like survival, food, sex, shelter and power over others. It
is also true that these are still powerfully valued ends at the present time. In some parts of
the world at the time of writing survival, food and shelter are still not securely realized for
untold numbers of people. It would be ridiculous to claim that such people should concern
themselves with knowledge and understanding as intrinsically valuable. Nevertheless, one
of the very reasons for holding such a state of affairs to be deplorable is the idea that
civilization enables man to transcend these primitive ends and to add more sophisticated
valued ends that include enquiry for its own sake. People might start out studying the stars
to help with the growing of crops, but they end up trying to understand the universe simply
because that understanding is intrinsically valued. Very much to the point of what is being
argued in this section, too, is the fact that where societies have been able to escape from the
subordination of all thought and action to the struggle to survive they have in fact vastly
speeded up their technical advance and raised the standard of living of their peoples. In
world history, as I am claiming in education, knowledge and understanding sought for their
intrinsic worthwhileness can have a general and powerful utility precisely because they are
not trapped in response to the present and the particular. Those who naggingly urge that our
education should be more relevant to the needs of an industrial society seek to trap people
rather than to liberate them. They seek to make their responses always to the present and
the particular rather than to the general and the universalizable. As in research, however, so
in education, the greater utility comes from not deliberately seeking it.
 The justification of liberal educationâ•… 23
Brand Blanshard, the American philospher, puts our point very well when he is discussing
the appropriate selection of knowledge that the rational temper needs to make:

We say selection. The other theories say that too, as all theories must. Where, then, do
we differ from them? In this: whereas they say that selection must be made with an eye
to utility, or to classless society, or to conformity with faith, or what not, we say that
the selection must be made with an eye to understanding what the world is like. Such
understanding is the goal that the impulse to know is seeking from its inception. It is the
only end that leaves the mind free; it is therefore the natural end of what we call ‘liberal’
education.1

Blanshard here hits the nail on the head. There is an unavoidable connection between
the valuation of liberty and the valuation of knowledge and understanding for their own
sake—‘the only end that leaves the mind free’—and we find Professor Hirst striking the
same note when he urges that liberal education should be considered as the development of
the rational mind in whatever form that freely takes.2
The second question as to the connection between fundamental knowledge and
understanding and particular choices and activities that it might underlie is perhaps best
answered with some examples. I shall give four brief examples in an attempt to mark the
distinction and the relationship.

Example (i) Cookery and science

Cookery is often taught as a system of careful adherence to recipe specifications. Ingredients
and procedures are carefully laid out and conformity is strictly required. Experiment is not
fostered and success is judged by the production of a good cake, pastry or whatever. This
mode of instruction fosters a dependence upon collections of recipes (cookery books) for
the rest of the person’s life. It is not only in cookery that one sees this particular approach
to content and method. A ‘cook book’ approach can also be seen in some schoolwork in
needlework, craftwork, and even in subjects like mathematics or badly taught science. The
alternative, liberal education approach, would be the avoidance of specific and recipe-
based work in favour of an attempt to promote understanding of underlying principles
of nutrition, human biology, available food materials and the various ways in which they
respond to heat, liquid immersion, and so on. These underlying principles, worthwhile
knowing in themselves as part of a general understanding of ourselves and our world, also
have the greater utility, the more universal utility, because they underlie all the particular
exercises of cookery in which we might engage. They also, of course, fundamentally
underpin the rational exercise of many other activities like choosing meals in restaurants,
planning one’s activities in relation to eating, even if one never cooks a meal at all.

Example (ii) Rote drill and general principles

Max Wertheimer gave an example many years ago of the advantages of an approach through
general principles over that of specifically learned formulae.3 His example was in teaching
procedures for finding the area of a parallelogram. Two classes were compared, both of
whom had previously learned that the area of a rectangle can be arrived at by multiplying the
24â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
length of the rectangle by its breadth. The first class were simply told that to find the area of
a parallelogram the base is multiplied by the perpendicular height. The pupils were required
to remember this and use the information to find the area of a number of parallelograms
of different sizes. The second class were required to find out for themselves how the area
of a parallelogram might be calculated, using their previous knowledge about rectangles,
and using scissors, pencils, rulers and protractors. Wertheimer describes how many of the
pupils in the second group discovered that a parallelogram can be converted to a rectangle
of the same area by drawing vertical lines, cutting the parallelogram and then reassembling
it as in Figure 4.1. Having made this discovery the pupils then quickly moved to the idea
that base multiplied by perpendicular height would give the area of the parallelogram.

Figure 4.1

More significant was what happened when each class was asked to find the areas not only
of parallelograms of different sizes, but also of shapes such as those in Figure 4.2. Shape 1,
of course, is simply a parallelogram drawn in another position, but even here some of the
group taught by rote formula had difficulty in seeing that the formula applied to this shape
as well. Most of the ‘discovery’ group, however, made ready application of what they had
discovered, not only to shape 1, but also to shapes like 2 and 3 which are clearly subject to
the same fundamental principle.
What had happened here was that whilst the first group had learned a specific rule
applicable to very specific content, or at least perceived as so limited, the second had
learned a principle of some generality applicable to a wider range of content. In being more
fundamental the principle was more useful, more general than the specific rule. Principles
are higher level rules of greater generality of application than the rules subsumed under
them. Principles help to gather masses of specific detail and example into graspable and
manageable clusters of thought. In a word, principles help us to understand. To learn by
learning principles is not just to learn the same content by a different method, it is actually
to learn a different content for a different purpose. To learn principles is directed to the end
of understanding the human situation for basically no other reason than the worthwhileness
 The justification of liberal educationâ•… 25

Figure 4.2

of understanding as against not understanding. Once again we meet the idea that aiming
for the intrinsically worthwhile rather than the more immediately useful nevertheless gives
us the greater utility.
Different approaches to moral education point to the same contrast between rules and
principles. One can be taught a strict code of rules, something like the ten commandments,
only to find that one cannot apply them to all circumstances without contradiction.
Understanding normative interpersonal relationships and human action in terms of more
general principles, however, like respecting persons or loving one’s neighbour, enables
more flexible responses and a greater framework of understanding at the same time. Again
this is a matter of content and method together; and, again, what is intrinsically worthwhile,
understanding persons and their relationships, turns out to have the widest and most general
relevance and utility. As Brand Blanshard has pointed out, moral principles turn out to
have a much more universal usage and validity than relativists like Westermarck, who
concentrated on diversity of rules and customs, could have supposed.4

Example (iii) Mathematical understanding and drill computation

There is little doubt in most people’s minds that some ability at basic mathematical
computation is highly generalizable, useful in a wide range of contexts. Up to a point
this is probably still true but it is dependent upon a social context that changes faster than
teachers sometimes realize. Most of the specific calculations in old English weights and
measures that I was drilled in at school I have never executed thereafter. The specific
26â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
necessities I was being trained to face have not turned out to be necessities after all,
they were simply too specific. On the other hand, some of the mathematics I learned did
generate a basic understanding of the calculable and the measurable way of making sense
of things that has been widely relevant. Some attempt to educate children mathematically
in this more general sense, without trying to predict future needs in any specific sense is to
be seen in recent mathematical syllabuses. Like all educational innovations, their success
depends upon how teachers use them, but the emphasis on understanding, on principles,
on coherence and generality of utility, as against the rote learning of isolated facts and
skills, is a liberal education emphasis as against a narrow utility approach. A pupil cannot
master at school all the mathematical, logical, measuring or symbolizing skills he might
need. A liberal education must therefore involve pupils in a more fundamental and flexible
mathematical understanding which, whilst providing a form of understanding of the world
worthwhile in itself, lays a foundation on which any of a great variety of mathematically
specific skills can be based. Trying to educate pupils in what is intrinsically worthwhile is
the opposite of trying to anticipate and meet specific utility needs; but it is compatible with
a wider utility if properly understood.

Example (iv) Aesthetic appreciation and received views

To some, of course, the mere presence of aesthetic elements in a general education is sufficient
to show a concern for liberal rather than utilitarian education. Once again, however, it all
depends on what is going on under the name of aesthetic education. If there is a genuine
attempt to differentiate aesthetic understandings from other forms of understanding, to help
pupils make their own justifiable aesthetic judgments and perhaps embody those judgments
in creative activities, then once again we have a liberal education approach concerning an
understanding that is intrinsically worthwhile, as all discriminably distinct forms of human
understanding are, and which is, at the same time, universally relevant because it underlies
all particular exercises of aesthetic judgment of skill. Attempts, on the other hand, either
to cover all particular manifestations of aesthetic skill (painting, pottery, weaving, music,
dancing, etc.), or to treat aesthetic judgments as collections of information to be passed
on from teacher to pupil in order to pass career-assisting examinations, is to drop into the
utility form again.
These sketchy examples are offered only to begin to fill out the idea of the intrinsically
worthwhile, engaged in with no view of utility, nevertheless having a wide and fundamental
utility. To make this point is sometimes seen as a betrayal of the argument justifying liberal
education by its concern for the intrinsically worthwhile, but I cannot see why this should
be so. Because we say that what is intrinsically worthwhile is not done for any specific
purpose beyond itself, we do not have to argue further that it cannot have any use whatever
itself. A developed aesthetic taste might well help me to choose curtains or plan my garden;
but it does not follow from this that I acquired aesthetic taste and judgment in order to
choose curtains or plan my garden, since I might have had nothing to do with either of
these activities.
It must not be imagined that these four examples delineate in any way a content for
a liberal education. This task comes later. The present point is simply that educational
tasks approached with intrinsic worthwhileness in mind can nevertheless have a most
 The justification of liberal educationâ•… 27
general utility, especially when the intrinsic worthwhileness is that connected with man’s
discriminably different and most fundamental ways of understanding, giving sense to, his
experiences.
The first justification for engaging people in a liberal general education as characterized
here, then, is that its very rejection of specific utility, and its espousal of intrinsically
worthwhile ends, provides the maximum and most general utility by its valuation of the
knowing and understanding underlying all specific activities and choices that can be
engaged in or made.

4.4 The transcendental or presupposition justification

The type of justificatory argument to be now described is used by Professor Hirst to justify
a liberal education where this is construed as the development of the rational mind: ‘It is
an education concerned directly with the development of the mind in rational knowledge,
whatever form that freely takes.5 Since I am embodying the idea of the development of the
rational mind in my description of a liberal education I want to consider Hirst’s justificatory
argument which, if it applies at all, will apply here. I shall be discussing the views of Hirst
again in connection with the content and substance of a liberal education in Chapter 7. It is
perhaps necessary to explain here that Hirst believes rational knowledge to be differentiated
into a number of ‘forms’, each one discriminably different from others by virtue of its centrally
characterizing concepts and its distinctive tests for truth. To develop the rational mind,
therefore, is to involve a pupil in each and every one of the forms of knowledge. This, although
brief, is probably sufficient an account for our present purposes. The following somewhat
lengthy quotation is necessary for our discussion and should now be meaningful. Hirst writes:

If the achievement of knowledge is necessarily the development of mind in its most basic
sense, then it can be readily seen that to ask for a justification for the pursuit of knowledge
is not at all the same as to ask for the justification for, say teaching all children a foreign
language or making them orderly and punctual in their behaviour. It is in fact a peculiar
question asking for justification for any development of the rational mind at all. To ask
for the justification of any form of activity is significant only if one is in fact committed
already to seeking rational knowledge. To ask for a justification of the pursuit of rational
knowledge itself therefore presupposes some form of commitment to what one is seeking
to justify. Justification is posssible only if what is being justified is both intelligible under
publicly rooted concepts and is assessable according to accepted criteria. It assumes a
commitment to these two principles. But these very principles are in fact fundamental
to the pursuit of knowledge in all its forms, be it, for instance, empirical knowledge or
understanding in the arts. The forms of knowledge are in a sense simply the working out of
these general principles in particular ways. To give justification of any kind of knowledge
therefore involves using the principles in one specific form to assess their use in another.
Any particular activity can be examined for its rational character, for its adherence to these
principles, and thus justified on the assumption of them. Indeed in so far as activities are
rational this will be possible. It is commitment to them that characterises any rational activity
as such. But the principles themselves have no such assessable status, for justification
outside the use of the principles is not logically possible. This does not mean that rational
28â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
pursuits in the end lack justification, for they could equally well be said to have their
justification written into them. Nor is any form of viciously circular justification involved
by assuming in the procedure what is being looked for. The situation is that we have here
reached the ultimate point where the question of justification ceases to be significantly
applicable. The apparent circularity is the result of the inter-relation between the concepts
of rational justification and the pursuit of knowledge.
Perhaps the finality of these principles can be brought out further by noting a negative
form of the same argument. From this point of view, to question the pursuit of any kind
of rational knowledge is in the end self-defeating, for the questioning itself depends on
accepting the very principles whose use is finally being called in question.
It is because it is based on these ultimate principles that characterise knowledge itself
and not merely on lower level forms of justification that a liberal education is in a very real
sense the ultimate form of education.6

One thing that it is important to be clear about in trying to decide whether this justification
works or not is exactly what it is we are trying to justify. If the question posed is ‘Why
be rational?’, then the argument clearly works. The question has no point if the value of
rationality is not presupposed, and is indeed seen to be an odd question as soon as one
reflects about it. Hirst, however, tries to make the argument do much more work than this.
He proposes two fundamental principles of justification, i.e. that what is being justified
is intelligible under publicly rooted concepts and also assessable according to accepted
criteria. I take this to mean that once we undertake justification there are certain rules of
reason, of language and logic, that must be accepted because that is what justification is.
This too one can readily accept and if the question asked is something like ‘Why bother
with the rules of reason when we seek justification?’ or ‘Why must justification be rational
justification?’ the answer is clearly that the rules of reason must be presupposed to give
intelligibility to such questions. So far, so good.
But Hirst pushes the argument still further, for he says that ‘to question the pursuit of any
kind of rational knowledge is in the end self-defeating, for the questioning itself depends
on accepting the very principles whose use is finally being called in question.’ There is
a move from the general to the particular here that rouses our suspicions, for we move
from the general idea of rationality itself and its fundamental principles to the particularity
of any kind of rational knowledge. If this merely means that questioning whether any
kind of knowledge should be pursued rationally rather than irrationally is self-defeating
then again the argument is clearly sound. But this is not quite what is said. If it means
that the pursuit of any kind of rational knowledge is justifiable because of the necessary
presupposition of reason in questioning it, then surely this is false. For example, the pursuit
of knowledge about ways of inflicting pain on people, however rationally engaged in,
can surely be questioned without the question being self-defeating or contradictory. Or,
again, we might question the advisability of pursuing further our undoubtedly rational
knowledge of how to make nuclear weapons without being hoist by the petard of our own
presuppositions. This is not an appeal to something other than reason, or beyond reason,
but only a reminder that presupposition or transcendental arguments only work at the level
of highly generalizable principles. We cannot logically question the value of rationality, or
the principles of justification, but we can, without contradiction, question the advisability
 The justification of liberal educationâ•… 29
of pursuing specific kinds of rational knowledge. All we have to do is show good reasons
why not; to show better reasons, that is, than any that can be produced for pursuing the
particular knowledge, or engaging in the particular activity.
What exactly does Hirst’s argument justify in respect of a liberal education? There is little
doubt that if I am talking about self-education then the transcendental argument applies.
This can be put at three levels: if I ask myself justificatory questions (What ought I to do?
How ought I live? How should I develop myself?) then I am committed by the very asking
to the adoption of rational principles in answering. This could be pushed further to embrace
my commitment to the development of my rational mind if I ask justificatory questions.
The most general extension of this kind of argument would be to say that I am committed
to developing my mind in such forms of knowledge and understanding as I believe to be
fundamentally constitutive of a rational mind if I ask justificatory questions or if I claim in
any way, even if only to myself, to value rationality. In other words, if I ask justificatory
questions I am committed to rationality, if I am committed to rationality I am committed to
being as rational as possible, and this means developing my rational mind as well as I can.
The justification we are seeking, however, is the justification that bears upon whoever
decides what a national system of education is to be like. At the present stage of the
argument it is an unanswered question who that should be. In the United Kingdom at the
time of writing the decision lies uneasily and in a not very determinate way with the central
government, local government and the actual head teachers and assistant teachers in the
schools. Can the transcendental form of argument be used to justify the beliefs and actions
of people responsible for the education of others rather than themselves?
It would seem that it can to some extent, but the problem might again be one of how
far it can be pushed. A person responsible for the education of others (let us ignore how
or why for the moment) is bound to ask what kind of education should be provided and
such questioning is only of point if it supposes there to be reasons for providing one
kind of education rather than another. This, in turn, presupposes a valuation of reason.
So far we are following the Hirstian style of argument: the education-provider, asking
himself what he should provide, is committed to proceeding rationally. But, even if he
does proceed rationally, will his reason, must his reason, necessarily tell him to provide a
liberal education of the kind Hirst describes or I have described. Might he not say, in an
underdeveloped country for example, ‘I know what a liberal education based on reason
is, but in the present circumstances of my country the rational policy is to concentrate our
education firstly on basic literacy and secondly on the vocational preparation of technicians
and administrators’? Clearly there could be countervailing reasons against providing a
liberal education such that the provider would not be in breach of his own valuation of
reason in heeding them. This is not made clear in Hirst’s s account but it has important
consequences for anyone seeking to justify the provision of a liberal education for all. It
would have to be shown, for example, that possible countervailing arguments do not apply
in the case under discussion.
The basic reason why Hirst’s use of the transcendental argument fails is because in the
form he gives it the argument is always self-referenced. What I mean by that is illustrated
by my earlier remarks about the argument working if I use it to apply to my own education
or development: if I respect reason I ought to develop my own rational mind in all its forms.
But what if I am seeking to justify what I should do to others, or get others to do to others?
30â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
Of course, if they already value reason I can demonstrate by using the transcendental or
presupposition argument that they are already committed and must welcome my proposals
for a liberal education; but if they are not committed already to the valuation of reason then
they are not committed to a liberal education and have no reason to accept the pro posals that I
or Professor Hirst might make. Of particular relevance to this point, of course, is that pupils
or potential pupils can hardly be thought of as already committed to the valuation of reason.
What I have to do, therefore, as one asking the question ‘What education should I try
to provide for others?’ and where the described form of a liberal general education is one
of the possibilities, is certainly to answer the question as rationally as possible. Doing this,
however, will always involve a consideration of possible countervailing arguments with
the honest supposition that in some circumstances they might prevail, and should always
involve more positive arguments of an ethical nature about why I should seek to influence
the beliefs and actions of others one way rather than another.
Although this is clearly to say that the justification of a liberal education cannot rest
on the transcendental or presupposition argument alone, at least in the strong sense of
‘justification’ used here, it is not to say that this form of justificatory argument is unimportant
or has no place at all in a theory of liberal education. It is of considerable importance to
note, as Hirst does, the inevitable connection between the ideas of justification on the one
hand and rational knowledge on the other. To enter into rational knowledge is to enter into
the business of justifying assertions; to enter into justification is to enter into the business of
rational knowledge; there is therefore an oddity about seeking a justification for engaging
in rational knowledge. About all of this Hirst is, I believe, quite right. Since, as I shall try to
show later, part of the methodology of a liberal education is to get pupils to see and accept the
bindingness of such necessary connections, and since, as I have said, the argument does work
for those who accept the valuation of reason, then liberal educators will in a sense be trying
to get their pupils to accept this kind of valuation and this kind of justification. They must,
however, engage in the exercise before this comes about, and they must accept that for some,
perhaps many, this ideally and intrinsically motivating understanding will never be reached.
They therefore need positive accompaniments to the transcendental argument, partly of the
kind already urged in Section 4.3, and partly of the ethical kind to follow in the next section.

4.5 The ethical justification

It is rather surprising that ethical arguments for certain kinds of education are not advanced
more often than they are. That they are not arises, I think, from a failure to make a
distinction discussed in the previous section, namely the difference between justifying a
self-referenced action and justifying an other-referenced action. The kind of education I
justify providing for myself might have a bearing on the education I justify providing for
others, but it is not subject to exactly the same kind of considerations. If, for example, I
argue that what I deem worthy for myself I ought to deem worthy for others I am clearly
starting to engage in an ethical argument. Arguments like those considered in the previous
section, that might convince me of the value of something like a liberal education for
myself, do not in themselves justify me imposing it upon others. All they justify regarding
others is that I should try to convince the others of the force of the arguments, and that is
not enough for our purpose. What we want are grounds for believing it our duty to provide
 The justification of liberal educationâ•… 31
a (possibly compulsory) liberal education for all the youngsters in the state. Such a duty
will be a moral duty.
The first point to make in this argument is the desirability of arguing from the idea of
adult duties rather than from the idea of children’s rights. I am doubtful about the coherences
of theories of rights and even more doubtful about their application, their motivating force.
The doubt about coherence is too big a matter to be a diversion here, but the doubt about
application warrants a mention. The doubt concerns what I suppose is a psychological
matter, i.e. what feelings and motivations are likely to be held by possessors of rights as
compared with possessors of duties? If a person believes himself to possess a right he has
grounds, he believes, for making demands upon other persons which may or may not be
responded to, however strongly the right is felt by its ‘owner’. The necessary action has
to come, not from the right-holder, but from some other who recognizes the right. One
who feels that he has a duty, on the other hand, feels that he ought to do something. The
duty bears upon him, not upon someone else. Another way of marking the distinction is to
say that rights arouse demands and expectations which, if not met and satisfied, generate
frustration and anger; whereas duties, if realized, move persons directly to action or to
feelings of guilt. The point of an argument justifying liberal education must be to convince
some people that they have a duty to arrange and provide a liberal education for others. Who,
exactly, has the duty thus becomes an important issue in this kind of justificatory argument.
This difficulty about rights and duties is worthy of note because much justificatory
discussion about education is mounted in a context of claims for human rights to education.
A good example is to be found in Brian Crittenden’s very interesting book, Education and
Social Ideals, in his chapter on Education as a Human Right. Crittenden starts his discussion,
as his chapter heading indicates, by seeking ways in which the right to education can be
maintained, but the talk soon changes to an account of moral obligation. The following
extract shows this happening:

Thus, given that liberal education, as an initiation into the basic public forms of human
understanding, so fundamentally affects the development of significant and distinctive
modes of human action, I think the right to education may justifiably be stated somewhat
more precisely this way: Everyone has the right to participate in liberal education at the stage
of general initiation and to be provided with whatever conditions will enable him to do so
to the full extent of his capacities and interests. The claim that this right makes on political
authority is not, of course, one that can be exhaustively satisfied…. As a human right,
however, it is not simply suggesting what would be desirable, but asserting that political
authorities principally have a basic moral obligation to promote the ideal as fully as they can.7

What really matters, then, is that some people, political authorities or others, are alleged
to have a moral obligation, a moral duty, to provide and facilitate the liberal education of
young members of the national community. It is the source of this moral obligation that
needs explicating, and it is precisely this that Hirst’s presupposition argument, at least in
the form in which it is presented, fails to do. So, of course, does the general utility form
of argument in 4.3, since even if it is accepted that a liberal education of the type briefly
described does have a profoundly general utility it can still be asked why all the children of
a country should be provided with such a generally useful education. A moral argument is
32â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
required to transfer the presupposition argument from self-reference to other-reference and
to under-pin the general utility argument.
Such a moral argument might run as follows:
A commitment to the rational life does not only imply a disposition to justification in
terms of knowledge and understanding but also, and importantly, a disposition to value
creatures who are the founts or originators of reason, namely persons. Any creature capable
of meaningfully asking the question ‘What ought I to do?’ or ‘How ought I behave?’ or
‘What should govern my conduct?’ must also be a creature who should recognize the
existence of other rational and potentially rational creatures of the same kind as himself.
Not to recognize the existence of such fellow creatures would be to ignore features of the
human condition obviously relevant to the rational answering of the questions posed. Not
to take the existence of other rational creatures into account in these considerations about
conduct would be analogous to a studied indifference to the existence of physical objects
in deciding how I should move about the physical world. The recognition of persons is of
course not the recognition of them merely as physical objects, rather it is a recognition of
them as sources of reason, centres of consciousness, possessors of interests and purposes;
and this recognition carries with it the recognition of an appropriateness of treatment of,
conduct towards, such creatures. Such an awareness of appropriateness of conduct towards
other persons is what is embodied in the idea of respect for persons as described in 2.3. The
central point of such respect is basically a respect for reason in the form of individualized
consciousness, the only living form that reason can take. Respect for persons is a special
kind of respect because it is essentially a respect for embodied and living reason: the kind
of conduct owed by all creatures trying to be rational to all creatures capable of rationality.
Kant caught the spirit of this idea in various forms of his categorical imperative. For example,
‘Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become
a universal law’ picks out the idea of an appeal to the universality of reason, whereas ‘So
act as to use humanity, both in your own person and in the person of every other, always
at the same time as an end, never simply as a means’ picks out the complementary idea of
respect for persons as founts of reason, centres of consciousness and possessors of interests
and purposes.8 The formal appeal to rationality and the respect for all creatures capable of
rationality are but two aspects of the same framework of morality.
To apply this kind of moral commitment to myself and other adults has two consequences.
The first, already noted, is that in regard to myself there is an obligation to improve my
own rational mind in so far as I am able. I have expressed this in terms of the duty an
individual has to continue his own liberal education. Kant expresses it thus:

It is the duty of man to himself to cultivate his natural powers (of the spirit, of the mind
and of the body) as a means to all kinds of possible ends. Man owes it to himself (as an
intelligence) not to let his natural predispositions and capacities (which his reason can use
some day) remain unused, and not to leave them, as it were, to rust.9

Secondly, however, this moral commitment cannot extend in any sense to my imposition of
this requirement upon other persons if they are adult. That part of my respect for them which
notes their capacity to act as free agents would forbid this. I might morally urge, facilitate
and certainly not hinder the rational development of my fellow human creatures, but I
should not try to compel it. There is a large and interesting area of discussion possible here
 The justification of liberal educationâ•… 33
concerning the desirability of state governments taking positive steps both to encourage
the rational development of its adult citizens and to act against such forces as might hinder
that rational development. Recognizing persons as free agents does not necessarily mean
that a government should be entirely passive on such an issue, especially if what might be
described as anti-rational forces can be shown to be over-influential for whatever reason.
This brings us to the consideration closest to our present purpose. What is the implication
of the framework of moral obligation sketched above for the moral obligation adults might
have towards children and young persons in the national community?
Some aspects of the moral duties adults owe to children are no different from those
owed to other adults. I should not take the life of children nor inflict unnecessary pain upon
them; I should not use them merely as means to my ends; I should aid them in avoiding
suffering wherever possible. The difficulty comes, however, in the more sophisticated
forms of conduct towards others warranted by the conception I have of them as rational
and autonomous agents. This children clearly are not, and to act towards them as though
they were would be a perverse kind of cruelty, particularly perverse if done in the name
of reason. What they equally clearly are, however, is potentially rational and autonomous;
they can, with help, become rational and autonomous at least to a greater rather than a
lesser degree. The ‘with help’ here is of great importance to the idea of our moral duty
towards children and young people. Personal autonomy is not a characteristic which
has had its child-rearing antecedents widely investigated and we could do with a great
deal more ernpirical research in this area. It seems highly likely, however, that personal
autonomy does not come automatically by some unfolding process of maturation, nor does
it come by any old process of interaction with adults or peers, but it is rather a product of
certain kinds of adult help and encouragement, without which it is unlikely to develop
at all. Furthermore, there are certain others kinds of adult interaction with children and
young persons that can be shown to be directly opposed to the kind of development I
am favouring here. Children do not ‘flower’ if they are left alone, though they may well
‘vegetate’, and they can all too easily be conditioned and indoctrinated into beliefs and
conduct that will act against their own best interests as creatures potentially capable of a
future of reason and autonomy.
If all this is so then the moral duty of adults towards children is reasonably clear and
has two parts. The positive part is a duty to help children, in all ways possible, to become
increasingly rational and autonomous up to the point where the moral duty to do this for
themselves might reasonably be expected to take over. The negative form of this duty is an
obligation not to allow or encourage the social environment to foreclose on the possibilities
and life-styles open to a child’s future as a rational and autonomous being. It is my contention
that the main way of exercising both of these responsibilities is to provide for the child a
programme of general and liberal education of the kind outlined, and to defend the priority
of such a liberal education from encroachment or replacement by other claims.
Now this really completes the moral justification for the provision of a liberal general
education in broad terms, but it leaves a number of questions unanswered. I have not yet
said exactly who might be expected to provide such an education. Clearly the responsibility
cannot be left to float diffusely among the adult population as a whole. A long and
honourable tradition has held that this responsibility falls clearly upon parents who may
delegate but may never entirely abdicate the obligation to educate their own young or to
see to it that they are educated. There are, of course, a number of difficulties in the way of
34â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
parents educating their own children and thus exercising their responsibility directly. It is
worth listing some of them:
(i) Division of labour and the extensive employment of both men and women outside
their own homes leaves little time for effective, prolonged and continuous teaching.
(ii) Direct parental instruction, as a major part of the child’s education, would isolate the
child from social experiences forming in themselves a part of a liberal education.
(iii) Increased expectation of the breadth and depth of a liberal education makes it unlikely
that more than a few parents would be capable of providing it.
(iv) Although it might be argued that parents have a particular responsibility for their
children’s education, the persons influenced and affected by the state of education of
a country’s young people constitute a much greater number.
(v) Differential provision by the varied exercise of parental responsibilities is particu-
larly unjust given the significance of education for a child’s future and present life.
Reasons such as these have led to varied forms of the delegation of parental responsibility
to tutors, governesses and grand or small independent schools, often of a boarding kind
where much more than the directly educational functions of parents were taken over for
long periods. These practices of the wealthy and relatively wealthy became extended
to the less wealthy by means of charities, endowments and religious beneficence until
eventually central and local government also became involved and included the provision,
if not always the direction, of education under its expected mandate. There has been a feel
about the patchy history of educational provision of ever larger and more bureaucratic
agencies taking on the erstwhile duties of parents. It would not be correct, however, to see
these larger and more powerful agents of educational provision as simply taking over the
responsibilities of parents. Such agents, especially central and local governments, would
claim to represent a much wider constituency of educational interest and concern than that
of parents alone. At one level this is only to say that agencies like governments will take
notice of special groups like, for example, employers and manufacturers. Such groups
come to expect that both their workers and the buyers of their products will have received
a reasonable level of education. More profoundly and importantly than this, governmental
provision of education might be seen, indeed has been seen, as defending and liberating
children by compelling their involvement in an education well beyond that which parents
alone could have provided, or, in many cases, would have wished to provide.
On this argument there is a prima facie case for government provision of education
by one means or another; but if a government accepts this responsibility it has the grave
moral responsibility of ensuring that the education provided is liberating and not further
restricting. The great temptation lying in wait for governments is to see education as
merely instrumental to any particular end seen as important at that time by the particular
government, like manpower provision, wealth-creating, or the unity of the nation.
I must return to these matters, but at this point it is enough to note that I am claiming
that the moral duty for the adult community to liberally educate its young is best taken up
on behalf of all by a democratically elected government as one of its duties of provision.
This must not, of course, be taken to mean that the members or officers of a government are
the best persons to determine the content or methodology of a liberal education. On these
matters, too, there is much more to say before our theory is complete.
 part II
Content and Method
 5
Some preliminary ideas

5.1 Introduction
The main intent of this and the following two chapters is to sketch an account of what
should actually be taught, and hopefully learned, as an adequate body of a liberal education.
It is necessary to prepare the ground for this. One of the major faults of many of the
proposals for an appropriate curriculum for universal and compulsory schooling is that lists
of subjects are laid out without any real attempt at explanation or justification of why one
should favour the particular list being offered. What is necessary is to show at some length
why the particular recommendations are made.
We have already gone some way along this road in our discussions of the nature and
justification of a liberal education. Claims for a particular content must clearly flow from
and be compatible with these earlier characterizations and justifications; and what these
earlier arguments point to is some characterization of what is to be taught and learned
in terms of intrinsic worthwhileness, fundamentality, rationality and capacity to liberate
pupils from the contingencies of the present and the particular. This in itself provides at
least some broad criteria to weigh proposals against.
Perhaps the first important introductory point to make is that the content and substance
of a liberal education is not the same as the content and substance of a total curriculum for
schools of universal and compulsory education. It would be most extreme to maintain that
the only activities to go on in such schools should be those activities essentially constituting
a liberal general education. I shall want to argue for the highest priority for the liberal
education elements in the schools and to point to the unjustifiable emphasis often given to
other and less important considerations; but even this is not to argue that nothing other than
liberal education should take place. What else might take place in schools, of course, will
need different and additional justifications to those considered here for a liberal education.
The content and structure to be argued for here, then, is peculiarly that of whatever part of
a total curriculum is to be considered a general and liberal education.
Some consideration must be given to the proposals of other writers on this subject. This
does, however, present difficulties since most other proposals are not solely concerned
with liberal education, neither do they clearly demarcate within their proposals which are
intended to be there for purposes of liberal education. This is not a trivial point nor an
unimportant difficulty in trying to think straight about a school curriculum. Those elements
of a curriculum there for liberal education purposes are to be justified differently from
those elements included for long- or short-term instrumental (usually vocational) purposes,
as I have argued earlier, so to conflate them in common proposals can be confusing.
Many writers on the curriculum do seem to take it for granted that vocational claims
will loom large. For example, Anthony O’ Hear, in pursuing the point that the deprivation
 Some preliminary ideasâ•… 37
of the liberty of the child in school is to be justified by the extent to which his schooling
‘promotes his own individual liberty and the respect he has for the liberties of others’, goes
on to specify:

The academic core of the curriculum, some (unspecified) vocational training, and moral
education are justified to that extent, the academic core because it forms the basis necessary
for personal decisions in life, moral education because it leads to an understanding of
the rights of others and vocational training because it will provide the basis of self-
sufficiency.1

Similarly, Robin Barrow believes that vocational studies should be introduced to pupils
among other elements at about the age of 13–15, but what he describes seems to be what
others call ‘careers education’, involving little more than an introduction to the kinds of
job likely to be available to school-leavers and the skills necessary for them. Barrow’s
arguments are utilitarian, as they are throughout:

It is worthwhile that the school should do what it can in terms of preparing the individual
child to take on a job to which he is suited, because such preparation can only lead to an
increase in personal pleasure for the individual. Greater personal satisfaction for individuals
can only lead to greater harmony in society as a whole.2

Yet again, the important directive, The School Curriculum, issued by the Secretary of State
for Education and Science in England and the Secretary of State for Wales in March 1981,
and which is likely strongly to influence the curricula of schools in England and Wales
for some time to come, states as one of its three propositions about secondary education:
‘School education needs to equip young people fully for adult and working life in a world
which is changing very fast indeed.’3 Like the proposals of Barrow, this seems to involve
mainly careers education and contacts with industry; unlike Barrow, the problem of
justification is largely ignored. One is tempted to observe that it is precisely because the
rate of technological change in the world is so great that it is not possible to prepare pupils
in school fully for it, but we must leave these arguments for the moment. One last example
will suffice for the point being made. Tim Devlin and Mary Warnock in their book, What
Must We Teach?, include aspects of careers education and other instrumental preparations
for life in their ‘outer circle’ which covers those activities which are to be compulsory but
not examined, though the justification here appears to be connected with the desirability
of focusing pupils’ critical faculties upon the near, the immediate and the particular, rather
than always upon the distant and the generalized.4
The point of this somewhat arbitrary selection of writers who make reference to vocational
or quasi-vocational studies in their proposals for the curriculum is only to indicate the
mixture that one finds. Instrumental justifications are simply not sufficiently distinguished
from the more fundamental requirements of a liberal education. I shall leave any further
consideration of non-liberal or utility claims on curriculum time to a later chapter, and deal
here with the considerations that bear directly on the content and substance of a liberal
education. In order to do this it will be necessary to look with some care at the work of three
writers who have made detailed proposals that do claim to have the fundamentality I am
concerned with and do rest on some substantial attempt at justification. Before doing this,
38â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
however, and then attempting my own positive account, I want to consider briefly some
concepts central to this discussion. They are: fundamentality, information, knowledge,
truth and understanding.

5.2 Fundamentality
This notion was introduced and briefly characterized in 3.3.2 where it was claimed that the
knowledge and understanding to be gained in a liberal education must be as fundamental as
possible in order to have the generality of application that is more rather than less liberating.
The origins of the word ‘fundamental’ are connected with the idea of a foundation or basis
upon which other things might stand or be built. Historically the idea has developed from
its purely physical connotation to the modern reference to less immediately material things
like knowledge, so that the ‘OED’ can now give the following meanings that convey the
idea intended here. ‘Fundamental’ is held to mean:
of or pertaining to the foundation or groundwork, going to the root of the matter;
serving as the base upon which to build. Chiefly and now exclusively in immaterial
applications. Hence forming an essential or indispensable part of a system;
primary, original; from which others are derived.
It is a possible temptation here to be carried away into some absolute reification of the idea
of a substantive ‘fundamental’ or a number of such ‘fundamentals’. This temptation must
be resisted: there are, of course, no studies that are absolute and permanent foundations
of everything else we might wish to do. Nevertheless, there are activities that are more
fundamental than others and as the fundamentality increases so does the generality of
the application: fundamentality is opposed to superficiality as generality is opposed to
specificity. Although it is not a logical connection it does also seem to be the case that what
is fundamentally known changes rather more slowly than the multitudinous ideas of more
superficial information that we have at any given time. For example, the items of railway
and bus timetable information that I need to have vary from time to time, as do the various
ways in which such information might be presented. Ways of measuring and recording
time, however, change more slowly, and an understanding of them is fundamental to
understanding any timetables whatsoever.
The idea of what knowledge and understanding is fundamental is somewhat like, though
not identical with, the philosophical idea of what has necessarily to be supposed in order to
make sense of something else. Morality, for example, only makes sense on the necessary
presupposition of the existence of free agents. To put this another way, it is more important
in moral education that a child should come to understand what it is to be a free agent than
simply to conform to a particular rule like not stealing, since the point of the latter can only
be understood in the context of the former. Hence the notion of free agency is fundamental.
It is not only within certain kinds of knowledge that some concepts and propositions
are more fundamental than others. For it is also the case that some whole frameworks of
knowledge and understanding can be considered more fundamental than others. It is in this
sense that animal biology is more fundamental than animal training, and human nutrition
more fundamental than cookery.
 Some preliminary ideasâ•… 39
What is fundamental is not to be confused with what is elementary or what is rudimentary.
Both of these notions are related to the idea of simplicity, but in different senses. Elements
are simple, that is irreducible, parts of a whole: the parts we would need to put together in
order to understand the whole. Rudiments are beginnings, not in the sense of foundations,
but in the sense of easy or imperfect starting points. We might say, for example, that the
elements of science likely to be first taught will be but rudimentary and cannot yet display
the ideas fundamental to science. This is an important distinction in education, since the
idea of teaching something because it is fundamental does not immediately reveal the order
in which that something should be taught.

5.3 Information and knowledge

5.3.1 Information
Claiming that a liberal education liberates people from the contingencies of the present
and the particular by involving them in fundamental knowledge and understanding calls
for some explanation of what kind of knowledge I am talking about. I am not talking about
information, at least not in the modern sense of that term. The earlier sense of ‘inform’ and
‘information’ would have made this distinction less necessary. The notion of information
was once a richer package than it now is, and carried the idea of the ‘formation or moulding
of the mind or character, training, instruction, teaching’ (‘OED’); so that to inform would be
‘To form, mould or train (the mind, character, etc.) esp. by imparting learning or instruction;
hence, To impart instruction to (a person), to instruct, teach (in general sense)’ (‘OED’).
The ‘OED’ is quite clear, however, that this sense is obsolete or rare and that the prevailing
sense is much narrower, and common observation confirms this. The modern sense of
‘information’ is ‘communication of the knowledge or news of some fact or occurrence; the
action of telling or the fact of being told something’; and the modern sense of ‘inform’ is
‘To impart knowledge of some particular fact or occurrence to (a person); to tell (one) of or
acquaint (one) with something’ (‘OED’).
There are two significant points about this contemporary usage of the word ‘information’.
Firstly, there is the emphasis on relatively isolated facts, events or occurrences that one is
informed about and the relatively non-evidential nature of the presentation. To be informed
that plants grow towards the light, for example, is simply to be given that information,
that fact. I need be given no reasons, demonstrations, explanations for this to be a piece of
information. Of course I would need to have some grasp of what a plant is, and what light
is, but this kind of understanding need only be minimal. Secondly, there is the emphasis
on straightforward telling. Information, typically, involves facts being passed on from one
person to another or others by word of mouth, print, or something similar. There is nothing
in this conception of one individual helping another to come to see why he should believe
something to be the case, only the transfer or the sharing of the information that it is.
There are many occasions where information, even on this narrowly restricted
conception, is all one needs. This may be because the understanding of the context in which
the particular piece of information is to fit can safely be assumed, or because the recipient
needs the particular piece of information for practical purposes of an immediate kind where
evidence and understanding in any extensive sense are not necessary. In all cases, however,
40â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
the recipient must trust the giver of the information, or have reason to believe that the giver
is knowledgeable and unlikely to deceive or misinform. Much information, though not all,
is transitory as to its truth and value: knowing the present price of timber is fine if I want
to buy timber now, but that information will be useless to buyers next year, though it might
continue to be of value to economic historians. It is the transitoriness of information, its
isolation from frameworks of understanding and evidence, and its dependence upon the
trusted information-giver that separates information from more fundamental knowledge
and understanding. Information will have a place in schooling, inevitably, but the content
and substance of a liberal education can never consist simply of a body of information,
however extensive and diversified that collection might be.

5.3.2 Knowledge improperly so called

Teachers sometimes give knowledge a low rating among all the things they see as important
in education. The arguments against knowledge take various forms, all, I want to argue,
involving a wrong conception of what it is to know. A typical account of what I am calling
a wrong conception of what it is to know is that knowing is simply being able to give back
or repeat a given piece of information. The following are all examples of this:
(i) A teacher tells a class that the area of a parallelogram is to be found by multiplying
the base by the perpendicular height. The pupils are subsequently asked how to find
the area of a parallelogram and reply that this is done by multiplying the base by the
perpendicular height.
(ii) After reading in the textbook that gaps are sometimes left in railway lines to allow for
expansion, pupils are asked why gaps are sometimes left in railway lines. They reply
that this is to allow for expansion.
(iii) Pupils are told that to divide fractions by fractions you turn the divisor upside down
and proceed as if multiplying. The pupils then proceed in this manner whenever doing
division of fractions.
(iv) A pupil is told that Nelson was killed at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. He then
responds correctly to the following questions: In what year was the Battle of Trafal-
gar? What famous English admiral was killed at the Battle of Trafalgar?
It is not necessary to claim that many, or even any, teachers engage in bringing about
learning in quite such a starkly verbalistic manner as this, though some undoubtedly
come dangerously near this extreme. What is interesting to note is that it is this kind of
model that some teachers have in mind when they claim to be concerned with more than
knowledge. They want pupils to be able to relate propositions together, to apply them to
other situations, above all to understand them. Knowing, as exemplified here, does not
involve any of this. Each piece of information is a separate piece, not necessarily related
to anything else. Information is simply given back, regurgitated, with no understanding
necessarily indicated. In extreme cases of such learning it does not even appear necessary
to understand the meaning of the words. This is why such learning is characterized as
parrot-like and earns the generally derogatory (at least nowadays) title of rote-learning.
Teachers are right, therefore, to deplore such learning and to seek for better things.
 Some preliminary ideasâ•… 41
They are wrong, however, to characterize such learning as knowledge. What is involved
here is not knowledge at all. In the examples given it should be plain that there is something
wrong or odd about calling whatever the pupils have acquired ‘knowledge’. If we consider
(i), (ii) and (iv), how could we really be sure that a given pupil knows what he claims to
know? He might, after all, just have guessed the right answer and surely what is guessed
cannot be knowledge. Even if the pupil had not guessed but had correctly remembered
there are still doubts. Of course the pupil can claim, and correctly claim, to know what the
teacher or textbook said; but is knowing that the teacher said that Nelson was killed at the
Battle of Trafalgar the same as knowing that Nelson was killed at the Battle of Trafalgar?
Try it with less usual examples: Is knowing that the teacher said that all Conservatives
are foolish the same as knowing that all Conservatives are foolish? Is knowing that the
teacher said that trade unions are too powerful the same as knowing that trade unions are
too powerful? If knowing ‘that X’ is the same as knowing that the teacher or any other
authority said that X, how will a pupil ever be able to know when and if a teacher or
authority is wrong? More importantly, what will count as knowledge for the pupil when no
teacher is around to tell him?
Example (iii) is not quite the same and appears to avoid these strictures. This is only,
however, because the pupil almost inevitably introduces his own additional reasons for
the correctness of the procedure by seeing that it works. This might be at the crude level
of seeing that he gets ticks instead of crosses; but it might be something like seeing, say,
that there are four halves in two and using this direct awareness to check the method:
i.e. 2÷½=2/1×2/1=4/1=4 which is what the pupil would have expected. If the pupil does
something like this he begins to acquire something much more like knowledge properly
speaking. He moves away from a reliance upon the teacher’s ‘say-so’ as the only grounds
for belief. The teacher could, of course, have helped the pupil to this piece of realization,
but that is to jump ahead in the argument a bit. The point to make at this stage is that it is
this derogatory model of mere knowledge, non-evidential knowledge, knowledge without
understanding that has made many teachers claim that their professional task is not so much
with knowledge as with other more demanding and meaningful aspirations. This model,
however, has never really deserved the title ‘knowledge’ at all. It is a caricature of knowledge,
a parody, bearing very little resemblance to knowledge as understood by those who have
genuinely to use knowledge—scientists and technologists, for example—or by those who
examine the nature of knowledge in that branch of philosophy known as epistemology
or theory of knowledge. It is to this richer conception of knowledge that I now turn.

5.3.3 Knowledge properly so called

Most cases of knowing that we are concerned with in school fall under one or other of two
heads: knowing how to do something and knowing that something is the case. A convenient
shorthand often used is ‘knowing how’ and ‘knowing that’. ‘Knowing that’ is sometimes
alternatively referred to as propositional knowledge, because knowing that something is
the case can always be expressed in terms of knowing a given proposition.
‘Knowing how’ seems to require proof in performance. Examples of such knowing
could be:
42â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
knowing how to ride a bike
knowing how to adjust a bunsen burner
knowing how to mend a puncture
knowing how to cut a screw thread on a lathe.
To show that you know how to ride a bike you must get on and ride one. We would be
suspicious of a person claiming to know how to mend a puncture if the task was always
avoided when circumstances required the demonstration and materials were available.
Knowing how to adjust a bunsen burner seems the same as correctly adjusting one in
appropriate circumstances. But is it really the same? We must be careful not to conclude
that because we normally ask for proof by performance there is no difference between the
knowing and the performing. We might at least raise some questions. For example: suppose
someone who normally rides a cycle to have an accident so that he can no longer ride. Does
he now not know how to ride a cycle? In some sense surely he does (very likely) still know
how to ride a cycle even though he cannot now give proof by performance. We say this
partly because he gave his proof so recently, but not only because of this, but also because
knowing how to do something suggests more than simply being able to do it. What this
more is does not seem very obvious. That we suspect the existence of something more is
revealed in what we say confidently and what strikes us as odd. That a computer is able to
compute is plain enough, whereas claiming that a computer knows how to compute strikes
me at least as odd. Similarly, an automatic pilot flies an aeroplane, that is without doubt;
but it sounds odd to speak of the automatic pilot knowing how to fly an aeroplane.
We might be in a better position to pursue this question when we have had a look
at the other kind of knowing—‘knowing that or propositional knowledge. Examples of
propositional knowledge could be:
John knows that metals expand when heated
Mary knows that Washington is the capital of the USA
Jean knows that water expands as it turns to ice
Rodney knows that Wellington led the British army in the Peninsular War
Jack knows that symbolism is used in ‘The Great Gatsby’.
What is known here in each case is a proposition which comes after the word ‘that’: ‘metals
expand when heated’, etc. It is always the case with propositions that something is asserted
about something else, and that this assertion can be true or false. There seems little doubt
that much of what teachers do in schools is concerned with getting children to know in this
propositional sense. As we shall see, however, knowing where the object of knowledge is a
true proposition is not ‘mere knowledge’ as described and criticized in the previous section.
A little analysis will help to demonstrate this.
To know that, for example, water expands as it turns to ice cannot mean simply that a
pupil can repeat the words ‘water expands as it turns to ice’ in response to an appropriate
written or spoken question. There are three reasons for doubting such a simple conception.
I have mentioned already that such a pupil might admit to guessing the right answer. Now
the peculiar thing about guessing is that we only guess what we do not know. Guessing
is incompatible with knowing. If I know I do not need to guess, and if I guessed that is to
admit that I did not really know. There is nothing particularly deep or philosophical about
 Some preliminary ideasâ•… 43
this, it is just that this is how we normally use the words ‘guess’ and ‘know’. We must note,
however, that guessing is compatible with simply uttering the proposition ‘water expands
as it turns to ice’, or whatever, correctly.
In the second place the pupil might utter the words correctly yet himself believe the
proposition to be false. Such cynical responses to teachers’ questions are far from unusual
in situations where pupils try to guess what teachers want. Knowing that something is the
case seems to require that the knower believes it to be the case. Uttering words correctly
might indicate the holding of a belief in the truth of the proposition, but clearly it does not
necessarily do so.
In the third place, and not so obviously, there is the question of why the utterance was
made. Even if the pupil does believe in the truth of the proposition, on what is that belief
based? One of the reasons why guessing does not count as knowing is that even if someone
chooses to believe something on the basis of a guess this hardly seems sufficient warrant
for the belief. To substantiate a claim to know that something is the case we normally
expect that there is a belief and, further, that the belief is justified in some way: there
must be some evidence, grounds or warrant for the belief. Only with all these conditions
satisfied are we really talking about knowledge properly so called.
Now if this is right it begins to look very different from the earlier idea of mere
knowledge. We have two important ideas that will need considerable further exploration.
Firstly, the idea that the pupil must in some sense come to believe for himself if he is to
really know, and, secondly, the difficult and far-reaching idea of evidence or grounds that
must be grasped, understood, by the pupil if he is to really know. These will be highly
important considerations for the content and substance of a liberal education, but also for
our later attention to the appropriate methods of liberal education. We might sum up the
account of knowledge properly so called in this way: I can claim to know that something
is the case when I have a belief that appropriately conclusive evidence entitles me to be
reasonably sure about.5
Notice that nothing is said here about ideas like ‘absolute certainty’, which some people,
going from one extreme to another, wish to attach to the idea of knowing. The emphasis is
upon ‘appropriately conclusive evidence’. What can count as appropriate evidence under
differing circumstances we have yet to discuss. The point to make at the moment is that
without such evidence beliefs cannot count as knowledge, with it they can. Again, there is
nothing more mysterious or stipulative about this than an explication of the way in which
the word is normally used. ‘How do you know that?’ we say, in response to somebody’s
claim to know; and when we do that we are asking for the evidence without which we do
not accept the claim as knowledge at all.
Let me now return briefly to ‘knowing how’. I raised doubts, a few paragraphs back,
about saying that knowing how to do something was no more than being able to perform
the appropriate action. We are now in a position to have a closer look at this. What I am
getting at here is simply that it is more useful and less ambiguous to say something like ‘is
able to’ or ‘can’ when all we are speaking about is the performance, i.e.
He can ride a bike
He is able to make boxes
She can make silk screen prints.
44â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
‘Know how’ can then be kept for all those cases where we are suggesting rather more than
mere performance. The ‘more’ might be something like:
(i) having some conception, presented to myself in some form, of what I am doing and
how it is differentiated from other things that I might be doing;
(ii) having some understanding of what I am doing in the sense of knowing why I do
certain things to achieve other things; and perhaps
(iii) providing evidence of (i) and (ii) in an account given to another person.
Another way of putting all this is to say that we talk about knowing how to do something
when the performance is, as it were, an intelligent performance executed with a background
of evidential beliefs about it. We might thus define it: I know how to do something when I
perform the action correctly (or have recently done so more than once) and have a background
of at least some beliefs about the action that appropriately conclusive evidence entitles me
to be sure about. Of course, I am going to say that the objects of liberal education, in so far
as they concern pupil performances, must be to get pupils to know how to do things and not
merely to be able to do them. The full implications of this significant distinction, like much
else I am sketching here, must await further elaboration.

5.4 Truth: what we ought to believe

Many philosophers, in giving an analysis of what it is to know, build in an additional con-
dition to those given for propositional knowledge in my definition. They want to say that
knowledge is justifiable true belief. This sounds very much the same but it is different in
one very important particular. What is being insisted upon is that my belief that something
is the case, to be knowledge, must not only be supported by appropriately conclusive evi-
dence, but it must actually in some sense be true. I do not think this is right. Indeed I think
it is a very confused and difficult position to maintain.
The main objection is that the truth condition can never really be satisfied meaningfully
in the additional way that seems to be expected. If I believe something to be the case, on
good grounds or evidence, what can I produce additionally to show that my belief is true?
Of course, there are cases where such claims are shown to be wrong, but this is only when
the false claim had ignored, or been unaware of, some additional evidence that someone
else can demonstrate. This is simply that one belief is shown to be less justifiable than
another, and in such a case only the more justifiable belief can count as knowledge. Sci-
ence, for example, progresses by the constant replacement of beliefs justifiable in their time
by beliefs that are more justifiable. To talk of false beliefs being replaced by true beliefs
hardly seems to fit the case when we know that there is a considerable likelihood that many
of our ‘true’ beliefs will themselves have to be replaced. The point, then, is that there can-
not be any sense of ‘true’ which is more than the most justifiable belief we can get. We
have probably been led astray by the apparent certainty obtainable in the truths of logic and
mathematics to imagine that such certainty lurks elusively to be sought for in other areas of
knowledge. But the certainty of logic is a special case, depending on the internal form and
relationships of formal systems. This certainty is just not to be found anywhere else.
To insist on the truth condition makes the grounds of knowledge and belief sound all of a
piece, whatever kind of belief we are thinking about. To ask only that beliefs be justifiable,
 Some preliminary ideasâ•… 45
warranted, grounded in some way, is more flexible and allows for variations in what is
to count as appropriate evidence. This supports our intuitive awareness that scientific
propositions, moral propositions, mathematical propositions and religious propositions,
for example, do seem to require different kinds of justification.
A dogmatic attachment to the idea that there are truths and falsities and that education
is concerned only with truths can lead to rather odd educational practices. A pupil can be
told, for instance, that he ought to believe something because it is true. This presents a
blank wall to the pupil. He can do nothing about it. He is faced with a mystery and a cult
where some have access to truths which are transmitted, as seen fit, to recipients in schools.
Because the teacher knows certain things to be true his sole concern comes to be that pupils
should believe them, not necessarily that pupils should be helped to see why these things
are believable. John Stuart Mill labelled truths communicated in this way ‘dead dogmas’ as
compared with ‘living truths’ and it is worth noting at some length what he says:

There is a class of persons (happily not quite so numerous as formerly) who think it enough
if a person assents undoubtingly to what they think true, though he has no knowledge
whatever of the grounds of the opinion, and could not make a tenable defence of it against
the most superficial objections. Such persons, if they can once get their creed taught from
authority, naturally think that no good, and some harm, comes of it being allowed to be
questioned. Where their influence prevails, they make it nearly impossible for the received
opinion to be rejected wisely and considerately, though it may still be rejected rashly and
ignorantly; for to shut out discussion entirely is seldom possible, and when it once gets in,
beliefs not grounded on conviction are apt to give way before the slightest semblance of an
argument. Waiving, however, this possibility—assuming that the true opinion abides in the
mind, but abides as a prejudice, a belief independent of, and proof against, argument—this
is not the way in which truth ought to be held by a rational being. This is not knowing the
truth. Truth, thus held, is but one superstition the more, accidentally clinging to the words
which enunciate a truth.6

Mill does not deny that it is useful to mankind to increase the number of truths—i.e. beliefs
that are no longer contested—but he fears that the very acceptance of these truths presents
problems about the way they are to be passed on to other generations who have not shared
in the excitement of their initial battle for acceptance:

The loss of so important an aid to the intelligent and living apprehension of a truth, as is
afforded by the necessity of explaining it to, or defending it against, opponents, though not
sufficient to outweigh, is no trifling drawback from, the benefit of its universal recognition.
Where this advantage can no longer be had, I confess I should like to see the teachers of
mankind endeavouring to provide a substitute for it; some contrivance for making the
difficulties of the question as present to the learner’s consciousness, as if they were pressed
upon him by a dissentient champion, eager for his conversion.7

What I am suggesting is that if we take the view that it is justifiable beliefs that we are
concerned about, rather than some reified ‘truths’ we are more likely to do something like
Mill wishes ‘the teachers of mankind’ to do, but there need be no contrivance about it. To
involve pupils in knowledge is to involve them in the evidence, the reasons for believing,
46â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
and this can only be done if the atmosphere is one of questioning, discussion and critical
examination of the kind that initially accompanied the discovery of the ‘truth’ in question.
Now, of course, people do commonly attach much importance to the idea of truth and
are likely to be properly suspicious of what looks like an attempt to dispense with it. What
I am doing, however, is only concerned with dispensing with the dogmatic reifications of
‘truth’ that I have described. I certainly do want to say that ‘Statement p is true’ can always
be translated without loss of meaning into ‘Statement p ought to be believed because there
are good reasons for believing it’ The only test for such a definition is that it might be
more useful and lead to less difficulties and pseudo puzzles than others. It has the added
advantage of drawing our attention to the need for involving pupils in the evidence and
justification for the beliefs we want them to hold.
What is not relinquished here is what we might call the moral concern for truth. ‘Teachers
should be concerned about truth’ becomes ‘Teachers should be concerned that beliefs are
justifiable,’ and this expresses one side of our moral concern about truth, namely, that
statements should not be made flippantly or carelessly, but should be uttered, as it were,
seriously—with care about their justification. Indeed, the concern is that the truths stay
living, even when transmitted in education, by virtue of not being dissociated from the
evidence and justification that gave them life: hence the emphasis on justifiable belief
rather than ‘truth’ which gets cut off from its justificatory base and becomes dead dogma.
The other side of the moral concern for truth that these arguments need not diminish
is the concern for honesty. In other words we still, of course, want people to say what
they believe to be the case and not pretend that something is the case when there are
reasons, known to the speaker, to believe otherwise. In particular we should want teachers
to involve children with beliefs that the teachers can honestly justify, in an atmosphere in
which the pupils can openly and honestly accept and reject beliefs on evidence available to
them. Honesty and sincerity are not abrogated by anything said here. These matters must
be examined more closely in considering the methods of liberal education.

5.5 Understanding
Unlike the characterization of knowledge by some teachers in the derogatory sense described
earlier, understanding is nearly always given the stamp of approval by contemporary
teachers. What exactly it is to understand may not always be very clear but that it is to be
valued few, if any, appear to doubt. Indeed, discussions all too often focus on reasons for
pupils not understanding or misunderstanding without any adequate positive conception of
understanding to hold these shortcomings against. Since I am arguing that the content of a
liberal education must rest on sound conceptions of knowledge and understanding I must
give some account of understanding here.
A first important point to make is that understanding occurs in individual minds. Even if
some might claim (though controversially) that stocks of knowledge can exist in libraries,
and on films and tapes, independent of individual minds, the idea that understanding could
so exist strikes us immediately as ridiculous. If machine intelligence is raised as a challenge
to this general point there might be more to be said; but it is probably sufficient here to say
that in so far as constructions capable of artificial intelligence can be said to understand,
they are acting in the significant respects like individual minds. Their existence does not
 Some preliminary ideasâ•… 47
destroy the point being made, but it might widen our conception of what counts as individual
minds. (See Margaret Boden: Artificial Intelligence and Natural Man8.) In education, at
least, it should be fairly obvious that the understanding we bring about, or seek to bring
about, must be fashioned in the minds of individual pupils, since there is nowhere else
that such understanding can occur. I make this point, not because it is seriously challenged
elsewhere—I cannot believe that anyone seriously doubts it—but rather because it is rarely
given the emphasis that it deserves and many classroom practices appear to be ignoring
its truth. Bringing about understanding in individual minds, and ascertaining whether such
understanding has been achieved, are two of the main tasks of liberal educators.
This does not say much about what understanding is, though it points to some things that
it is not. To move rather closer we can note that ‘understand’ is sometimes used to mean
‘know’, as in: ‘I understand that metals expand when heated’ or ‘I understand how to solve
simultaneous equations’. If this was all the word ‘understand’ meant it would clearly be a
redundant term. There is another reason for not supposing ‘understanding’ to be synonymous
with ‘knowing’, which is to do with the idea of correctness associated with knowing and
not necessarily with understanding. The logical and conceptual structure of ideas picked
out by ‘understanding’ is in some ways more complex than that picked out by ‘knowing’.
The difference is mainly that to know something I must have a belief that is, in some sense
at least, correct. To understand something always leaves open the further questions of (a)
whether it is appropriate to talk of this example of understanding as correct or not, and (b)
if so, whether it is correct or not. Another way of putting this is to say that ‘understand’
can have two different but connected meanings which generate different opposites.

1 Understand = make sense of something in a way meaningful to me.

Not understand = fail to make any sense of the something meaningful to me.
2 Understand = make sense of something in a way meaningful to me and correct
in some publicly demonstrable way.
Misunderstand = make sense of something in a way meaningful to me which can be
shown to be incorrect in some publicly demonstrable way.

In the second sense of the word we often speak of having an understanding, where this
can mean various things. It might mean that although a person has an understanding of
something he has put it together incorrectly—e.g. he understands a whale as a fish. On the
other hand it might mean, when we say that he has an understanding, that his understanding
is one among many equally possible ones, or that his understanding is one among a number
of controversial understandings, where not all can be correct but the issue is not yet
decided. For example, there might be various ‘understandings’ of a picture—one person
might see Breughel’s picture of the harvesters under the tree as an essay in yellow and
gold, another sees it as a masterpiece of perspective, yet another sees it as a statement about
man’s innate gluttony and sloth. Each ‘understanding’ is possible and no one excludes the
others. On the other hand one person might understand violence as something to be morally
condemned in all circumstances, whilst another person believes violence to be sometimes
justifiable. Here both cannot be right, yet it is difficult to see how one clearly demonstrates
the mistake, the misunderstanding, of the other. These areas of inquiry which appear to
48â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
allow, quite properly, for kinds of understandings not reducible, or not easily or readily
reducible, to one correct kind, are of the greatest importance for the curriculum and for
teaching methods.
What is common, however, to all these usages of the word ‘understand’ is the idea of
making sense of something in a way meaningful to me. Clearly and strictly, if the sense is
not meaningful to me there is no sense made. Nevertheless, it is important, I think, to stress
the ‘meaningful to me’ part to reinforce the point already made about understanding going
on in individual minds, and to remind ourselves, as teachers, that for something to be clear
and meaningful for us is only part of the exercise of getting it to be clear and meaningful
to someone else.
What is it, then, for something to make sense in a way meaningful to me? The main
answer to this, I believe, lies in three key ideas:
(i) relationships or linkages,
(ii) non-arbitrariness, and
(iii) coherence.
If I am struggling to make sense of something that at the moment puzzles me I am normally
trying to make relationships or linkages of some kind: What is this like? What is it not
like? How could it be used? Is it a kind of ‘X’? Is it long enough, heavy enough, light
enough, tough enough for an ‘X’? These kinds of questions refer, of course, to attempts to
understand some physical object, but similar questions arise about ideas, words, sentences,
theories or any ‘thing’ capable of being understood. The object of the exercise is always to
fit the ‘thing’ to be understood into some framework of relationships which, of course, must
already partly exist in some form in my own mind. In order to make this fit I may have to
alter the framework of meanings I already have in my mind. Piaget’s account of adaptation
by assimilation and accommodation is an elaboration of this idea.9 All understanding is
making, enlarging, sophisticating, modifying systems of relationships or linkages.
Individual understanding is greatly facilitated if the individual is assisted, by say a
teacher, to enter into those great assemblages of relationships already shared by the minds
of many others and variously described as disciplines, forms of knowledge, realms of
meaning, and so on. To grasp the way in which an idea, a theory, a word, an object, a tool
already fits in a framework of ideas known to others (and increasingly to the person trying
to understand) as physics, or geography, or history is far easier than to fit every isolated
object of cognition or perception into frameworks of purely individual construction. It is
this necessary interplay between the personal mental constructions that must be made if
understanding is to occur, and the already established, shared and public bodies of knowledge
and understanding, that constitute the challenge and difficulty of education. As the shared
and public knowledge increases in volume and complexity, the temptation is to shortcut
or ignore the necessity for real individual understanding, and the result can be disastrous.
The idea that the linkages and relationships have to be non-arbitrary is a simple but
necessary counter to the madder forms of idiosyncrasy. It is not to say that the pattern of
relationships constituting a person’s understanding must be just like everyone else’s pattern,
for to say this would deny the possibility of any kind of discovery, creativity or innovation;
but it is to say that the relationships must embody some system, some rule, some process of
ordering, either already existing or newly capable of demonstration. Indeed, a relationship
 Some preliminary ideasâ•… 49
that does not invoke these characteristics raises difficulties about how it can be conceived
of as a relationship.
The idea of coherence is the idea of ‘things’ sticking together but the adhesive idea has
clearly become metaphorical. What is normally held to supply the adhesion when we are
talking of the coherence of a network of related ideas are the twin notions of consistency
and connectedness.10 Most writers admit that perfect coherence is an ideal rather than
a realizable experience. In a perfectly coherent system of propositions not only would
no proposition contradict any other, directly or by implication (consistency), but every
proposition would entail all the others ‘if only for the reason that its meaning could never
be fully understood without apprehension of the system in its entirety’.11 It is the last idea,
that of the interdependence of each idea, concept or proposition on each and every other
idea, concept or proposition, that constitutes the ‘connectedness’ part of coherence. The
supposition that in its complete form coherence is an unrealizable ideal should not be
taken to detract from its importance as a criterion of understanding. The important idea
to grasp is that there is no way in which ideas, concepts, words, propositions, etc., can
be grasped, made meaningful, in isolation. Meaning can only come by the grasping of
the interdependent body of relationships in which the idea, etc., has its being. This is not
merely an important idea in education. It is no exaggeration to say that it is the central and
most characterizing idea of a proper liberal education. Pupils must be initiated into the
most fundamental networks of ideas and activities mankind has evolved, in a way which
gives them each an individual knowledge and understanding of these great systems to
whatever extent is individually possible. No other procedure can properly liberate each
individual pupil from the particular dependencies of time and place, nor properly fulfil the
moral duty that one generation owes to the next.

5.6 Summary
It is perhaps useful at this point to attempt a summary of these preliminaries.
Building on the characterization of a liberal education set out earlier, I am now arguing
that the criterion of fundamentality cannot be satisfied by seeing liberal education as a
purveying of information, even where such information might be considered immediately
useful. Schools will always have to supply some information, of course, both in its own right
for immediate or short-term usefulness, and as instrumental to the more profound purposes
of liberal education; but it is the deeper purposes of knowledge and understanding in their
full senses that must provide the mainsprings of a liberal education. The understanding
criterion involves the initiation and engagement of pupils in those frameworks of
interrelated ideas and activities that have stood the test of time in terms of fundamentality,
non-arbitrariness and coherence, and the knowledge criterion involves the initiation and
engagement of pupils in frameworks of interrelated, evidentially held beliefs where ideas
of justifiable correctness are significant. In both cases the suggestion of ‘initiation and
engagement’ distinguishes an attitude to knowledge and understanding as profoundly
different from that appropriate to the purveyance of information, the handling of ‘mere
knowledge’, or the transmission of ‘truths’ in the ‘dead dogma’ sense castigated by Mill.
The methodological implications of ‘initiation and engagement’ will be considered more
fully in a later chapter.
 6
Three accounts considered

There is a large literature of suggestions for the curriculum of schools of universal education.
As indicated earlier, however, much of this literature is of little use in an endeavour to find
proposals based on fundamental principles, and much of it is almost hopelessly entangled
with considerations other than those appropriate to the justification of a curriculum for a
liberal education. Before enlarging the general suggestions so far made into a more specific
account of the content and method of a liberal education I intend to consider the views of
three writers, all philosophers of education, who have attempted to base recommendations
on principles which, though different, are considered to be fundamental. The three are:
(i) P.H.Hirst: based on an epistemological analysis of the nature of knowledge.
(ii) P.Phenix: claims to be based on the idea that ‘knowledge in the disciplines has pat-
terns or structures and that an understanding of these typical forms is essential for the
guidance of teaching and learning’, but is probably best seen as based on a phenom-
enological account of the differentiated areas of ‘meaning’ evolved by humankind.
(iii) J.White: based on the educational implications of a subjective theory of values.

6.1 P.H.Hirst and the forms of knowledge

Although the work of Philip Phenix mainly concerned with curriculum content appeared in
the year before that of the appearance of Hirst’s earliest curriculum paper it is convenient
to consider the work of Hirst first, partly because of its very considerable influence in the
philosophy of education over the last decade and a half, and partly the better to understand
the base from which Hirst mounts his most trenchant criticism of Phenix. It is also the case,
I believe, that the thesis propounded by Hirst is the most serious attempt so far to get at
what might be a fundamental basis for the curriculum of a liberal education.
Hirst first discussed his ideas about liberal education in his paper, Liberal Education and
the Nature of Knowledge, which appeared in 1965. This paper contained the essentials of
the thesis which have remained relatively unchanged in their most important parts in more
recent writings, though a number of significant modifications of detail have emerged in later
papers and in lectures to students taking the Education Tripos at Cambridge. Fortunately,
nearly all the relevant material has been published in the collection ‘Knowledge and the
Curriculum’ and most of my references are to that volume.
Earlier I noted that Hirst justified a liberal education by a presupposition argument,
namely that an education concerned with the development of the rational mind was itself
presupposed in all justificatory questioning. Liberal education, then, for Hirst, is essentially
the development of the rational mind in the individuals being educated: ‘It is an education
concerned directly with the development of the mind in rational knowledge, whatever form
that freely takes.’1 The connection between ‘knowledge’ and ‘mind’ is seen by Hirst as
 Three accounts consideredâ•… 51
a conceptual one, not to be confused with attempts to shape or mould the mind to some
external reality, since this would be to presuppose a philosophy of metaphysical realism,
and Hirst does not want to tie his thesis necessarily to such a philosophy. Neither does
Hirst see mind as having some inbuilt structure or process of operation of the brain which
itself develops into certain differentiated kinds of knowledge or ways of knowing. He is
thus concerned to free his thesis from any kind of ‘realist’ determination from, as it were,
the outside or the inside. The context is rather one of human interaction, an initiation into
conceptual schemata developed in the social and public interactions of the past:

to have a mind basically involves coming to have experiences articulated by means of

various conceptual schemata. It is only because man has over millennia objectified and
progressively developed these that he has achieved the forms of human knowledge, and the
possibility of the development of mind as we know it is open to us today.2

The link between mind and knowledge is, then, for Hirst, a logical relationship:

from which it follows that the achievement of knowledge is necessarily the development of
mind—that is, the self-conscious rational mind of man—in its most fundamental aspect.3

Before we take the next expository step, which is to look at what Hirst goes on to say about
the nature of knowledge, now seen to be indissolubly linked with the nature of mind, it is
important to note another link of a logical and conceptual kind that Hirst makes. This is the
link between the idea of knowledge and the idea of meaning. Some indication of this was
given in Hirst’s early paper, where he says, for example:

To acquire knowledge is to become aware of experience as structured, organised and made

meaningful in some quite specific way.4

and where he is at pains to point out that it is not only knowledge in its minimal sense that
consists of publicly statable conceptual structures, but that:

The various manifestations of consciousness, in, for instance, different sense perceptions,
different emotions, or different elements of intellectual understanding, are intelligible only
by virtue of the conceptual apparatus by which they are articulated.5

and that without the human development of cognitive frameworks embodying public
criteria:

all other forms of consciousness, including, for example, emotional experiences, or mental
attitudes and beliefs, would seem to be unintelligible.6

Thus, on Hirst’s account, to find meaning, intelligibility or understanding in any aspect

of conscious life is only possible under the diverse cognitive structures that constitute
different forms of knowledge. To classify knowledge, if that is possible, is to classify
meaning. There is no wider class of meaning of which knowledge is only a sub-class.
What is not quite so patent in the earlier paper is the extent to which this linkage between
meaning and knowledge rests on a form of the verificationist theory of meaning: the idea
52â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
that a proposition or statement is only meaningful if we know, at least in some sense, how
the statement might be tested for truth or falsity. That he attaches importance to this idea is
made clear by Hirst in his much later paper directed against Phenix:

all aspects of meaning necessitate the use of concepts and it is only by virtue of
conceptualisations that there is anything we can call meaning at all. And no concepts can
be the basis of shared meaning without criteria for their application. But the criteria for the
application of a concept, say ‘X’, simply are the criteria for the truth of statements that say
something is an ‘X’. By this chain of relations, that meaning necessitates concepts, that
concepts necessitate criteria of application and that criteria of application are truth criteria
for propositions or statements, the notions of meaning and true propositions, and therefore
meaning and knowledge, are logically connected.7

This tight connection between meaning and true propositions is an essential part of Hirst’s
structure of ideas. It turns out to be a very restricting and harmful part of his thesis, as we
shall see when I turn to criticism. But now I must move on to Hirst’s account of the forms
of knowledge themselves.
These are to be not merely discriminable conceptual frameworks, but discriminable
bodies of true propositions, and are indeed seen to be distinguishable, one from another, by
an examination of those aspects which are ‘the necessary features of true propositions or
statements’. These aspects are:
(i) Certain central concepts that are peculiar in character to the form.
(ii) A network of possible relationships between concepts in which experience can be
understood. A distinctive logical structure.
(iii) Distinctive tests against experience in accordance with particular criteria peculiar to
the form.
(iv) Particular techniques and skills for exploring experience and testing their distinctive
expressions.
In later papers far less attention is given to (iv) and it is fairly clear that the significant
and important distinguishing criteria came to be regarded by Hirst as the idea of specific
conceptual structures based upon some centrally characterizing (if not categorial) concepts,
and the idea of specific and discriminate truth tests. For instance, in the paper against
Phenix we have:

These forms, I have argued, can only be distinguished by examining the necessary
features of true propositions or statements: the conceptual structures and the truth criteria
involved.8

and in another place:

the three elements in which the differences are to be found are the concepts and the
logical structure propositions employ, and the criteria for truth in terms of which they are
assessed.9
 Three accounts consideredâ•… 53
In trying to enumerate the exact forms of knowledge distinguished by these criteria there
appears to have been some confusion, to be noted more fully later, as to whether logically
discernible forms are being listed, or empirically discernible claims for such status are
being listed. In the early paper there seemed little doubt that what Hirst had in mind was a
list of what seemed to be revealed by his analysis, when he wrote:
In summary, then, it is suggested that the forms of knowledge as we have them can be
classified as follows:
I Distinct disciplines or forms of knowledge (subdivisible): mathematics, physical
sciences, human science, history, religion, literature and fine arts, philosophy.10
II Fields of knowledge: theoretical, practical (These may or may not include elements of
moral knowledge).
To this list Hirst added another suggested classification based on organizations of
knowledge:

formed by building together round specific objects, or phenomena, or practical pursuits,

knowledge that is characteristically rooted elsewhere in more than one discipline.11

He gives geography as an example of such a ‘field of knowledge’, being a theoretical

study of man in relation to his physical environment drawing on more than one form of
knowledge. Engineering is given as an example of a practical field which similarly draws
on more than one form for practical, rather than purely theoretical, purposes. Thus Hirst
finishes his description:

It is the distinct disciplines that basically constitute the range of unique ways we have of
understanding experience if to these is added the category of moral knowledge.12

By this point in the argument it is clear that in order to be liberally educated pupils must,
according to Hirst, be engaged in some way in each of the distinguishable forms of
knowledge, since that is what it is, in our historical time, to develop a rational mind. This
does not mean that the content of a liberal education would simply be each of the forms
taught separately. How pupils are to be best initiated into the forms will depend upon
many things of a psychological, practical and organizational kind. Integrated studies, for
example, are not automatically ruled out. Nevertheless, Hirst is emphatic that, however it
is done, the objective must be that pupils become able to know and to understand in each
of the forms of knowledge.
Hirst is also at pains to point out that he does not see a liberal education as synonymous
or coterminous with a general education:

Certainly liberal education as it is here being understood is only one part of the education
a person ought to have, for it omits quite deliberately for instance specialist education,
physical education and character training.13

In writing about the forms of knowledge thesis in later papers, and in replying to criticism,
Hirst has not seriously altered his general thesis but two modifications are worthy of note
before turning from exposition to criticism. The first concerns the characterization of
54â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
the suggested forms of knowledge. The chapter on The Curriculum in the well-known
introductory text, ‘The Logic of Education’, written jointly by Hirst and Richard Peters in
1970, says:

Detailed studies suggest that some seven areas can be distinguished, each of which
necessarily involves the use of concepts of a particular kind and a distinctive type of test
for its objective claims.14

and the seven are given as:

(i) the truths of formal logic and mathematics
(ii) the truths of physical science
(iii) awareness and understanding of our own and other people’s minds
(iv) moral judgments
(v) objective aesthetic experience
(vi) religion
(vii) philosophical understanding
The most significant difference here is the removal of difficulties associated with the
previous suggestions that ‘history’ and ‘human sciences’ constituted discriminate forms.
Hirst himself notes that he came to believe that the social sciences and history were at least
partly empirical studies, not logically distinct from the physical sciences, but that:

On the other hand, history and some of the social sciences are in large measure not concerned
simply with an understanding of observable phenomena in terms of physical causation, but
with explanations of human behaviour in terms of intentions, will, hopes, beliefs, etc. The
concepts, logical structure and truth criteria of propositions of this latter kind are, I would
now argue, different from, and not reducible to, those of the former kind.15

A second important difference is to cease talking of literature and the fine arts and to talk
instead of ‘objective aesthetic experience’. This is to meet the fairly obvious objection
that literature and the fine arts includes under its umbrella title a vast range of activities,
many of which it would be extremely difficult to consider in terms of the truth or falsity
of propositions. Similar objections could be made about religion. In dealing with these
objections Hirst says:

The suggestion that in literature and the fine arts and also in religion we have distinct forms
of knowledge has not surprisingly provoked opposition. Let me therefore make it clear that
they can to my mind only be regarded as such in so far as they involve expressions that
have the features of true propositions. We certainly do talk of the arts and religion as being
cognitive, as providing distinctive types of knowledge. Whether this is justifiable and there
is a form of knowledge in the arts, depends on whether or not artistic works themselves
have features parallel to those of propositions with related objective tests.16

What these modifications of the delineation of the forms adds up to, I believe, is a tightening
of the thesis around the idea (which was there from the start) that what is being talked about
as forms of knowledge are discriminable bodies of true propositions. Whilst undeniably
 Three accounts consideredâ•… 55
tightening the logic of what is being said, this does have the effect of making it more
difficult to justify within the thesis the inclusion in the curriculum of a liberal education of
large bodies of practical and expressive activities thought by many to be important.
As against this tightening of the thesis against criticism there has been a corresponding
but less noted weakening which is the second and different modification to be indicated.
In the ‘Logic of Education’ chapter it was still being said that the seven areas ‘can be
distinguished’, the assumption being that these seven areas were revealed in some way
by the logical and conceptual analysis. This impression is strengthened by the words,
‘Detailed studies suggest that some seven areas can be distinguished.’17 Later in the same
passage, however, the word ‘claim’ starts to appear. Morality, for example, ‘must be
recognized as having serious claims to independent status. We are also told that there are
‘claims for a distinctive mode of objective aesthetic experience’ and that ‘Religious claims
in their traditional forms certainly make use of concepts which, it is now maintained, are
irreducible in character.’18 The idea that we are not now always talking about a number
of forms actually logically and conceptually distinguishable by analysis, but rather about
empircally observed claims to such independent status is put more openly in the brief
reference to the forms in Hirst’s paper against Phenix: ‘On this basis it seems to me that we
must at present acknowledge serious claims to some seven distinct categories of meaning
and knowledge.’19
With the noting of these changes and modifications we must now consider the exposition
of Hirst’s views reasonably complete and turn to criticism.
There is much to be said in favour of Hirst’s approach from the point of view of the
necessities of a liberal education sketched earlier in this work. Most importantly, Hirst is
trying to get at what is fundamentally necessary for an education to be liberating. If his
account is correct nothing could be more fundamental than the forms of knowledge. By
definition they would be irreducible, either to one another or to anything else that could
be knowledge. This is fundamentality indeed, and if the account is correct then the forms
of knowledge would have to be the basis of a liberal education, since they would underlie,
characterize, give meaning to, anything that anyone could undertake or choose. Undeniably,
also, if correct the thesis satisfies my criteria of rationality since the development of the
rational mind is at the very heart of the thesis. Intrinsic worthwhileness is pointed to by the
difficulty of imagining how anything else could be valued if the conceptual and cognitive
framework necessary for knowing and understanding it were not valued in some prior way
and to some extent. The rational man may value any or none of a great number of things,
but he must at least value the development of his own rational mind. Hirst does not say
this specifically, but it seems implicit in all he does say that he believes the value of the
development of the rational mind to be objectively justifiable and not a subjective value
which one might take up or lay down as one pleases.
All of this, then, comes admittedly nearer to satisfying the characteristics of a liberal
education than anything else I have seen in print, certainly nearer than the other proposals I
shall look at more briefly. Yet one must nevertheless say that as the thesis stands it will not
do. There are serious and gravely weakening difficulties that must be considered.
The main difficulty arises in any serious attempt to enumerate distinct forms of knowledge
possessing, and therefore distinguishable by, the specific and categorial concepts and the
distinctive tests of truth required by the thesis. It is first of all necessary to be very clear
56â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
what kind of an exercise this is. There are three seemingly similar exercises which are in
fact quite different:
(a) the classification of knowledge and understanding into discrete forms by a demonstrable
analysis of different and distinguishable categorial concepts, conceptual frameworks
and tests of truth;
(b) the noting of bodies of alleged knowledge and understanding that proceed as if they
had demonstrably distinguishable categorial concepts, conceptual frameworks and
tests of truth; that is, it could be said of such bodies that they could only be coherent
if they had such concepts, frameworks and tests, but it is not demonstrable that they
have, or it is controversial whether they have;
(c) the noting of empirically observable claims by many or few persons that such and
such bodies of alleged knowledge and understanding have the independent status that
distinctive categorial concepts, conceptual frameworks and truth tests would give
them.
Without some success in actually indicating forms that satisfy the distinguishing criteria
the thesis of Hirst is reduced to one of prescriptive definition: If an ‘X’ is to be a Hirstian
form of knowledge it must have distinctive categorial concepts, conceptual framework
and tests for truth. The class of forms so defined might be a null class! It might have one
proper member as scientific reductionists would argue. It might have two, as the logical
positivists who shared Hirst’s attachment to a verificationist theory of meaning, argued.
What Hirst has not done, and to be fair does not claim to have done, is to demonstrate that
there actually are the seven he suggests. What he increasingly says, as I have noted above,
is that some ‘X’s are the subjects of claims to be considered as having a separate status, e.g.
religion; whilst other activities can only be considered coherently as forms of knowledge
if, or in so far as, they can be shown to have distinctive categorial concepts, conceptual
frameworks and tests of truth, or in such part of them as can be so shown. Thus the appeal
is indeed sometimes to (a), but it is also sometimes to (b) or (c).
This apparent confusion has a number of implications, all important and harmful to
the thesis. We are no longer clear, for example, exactly what it is that justifies a particular
knowledge activity in the curriculum of a liberal education. Is it to earn its place by a
satisfactory outcome of the (a)-type analysis? Mathematics might satisfy this test, and most
people might be prepared to accept that the physical sciences do, too. But beyond these two
we enter areas of considerable controversy as to the distinctive concepts, structures and
truth tests. Or is a possible knowledge activity to be included in the curriculum by some
(b)-type conjecture? If so, this produces odd results. Someone convinced of the importance
of literature and the fine arts, for exarnple, notes with satisfaction that they seem to get
into the curriculum of a liberal education on Hirst’s account. Closer inspection, however,
especially of Hirst’s debate with Scrimshaw,20 reveals that what Hirst means by this form
of knowledge is nothing like the rich mixture of making, doing, appraising, expressing,
criticizing and appreciating that most lovers of the arts have in mind. This whole area only
satisfies Hirst’s criteria in so far as it, or in such part of it as, can be conceived of as a body
of true propositions. Speaking of both religion, and literature and the arts Hirst says, as we
have already noted:
 Three accounts consideredâ•… 57
Let me therefore make it clear that they can to my mind only be regarded as such (i.e.
forms of knowledge) in so far as they involve expressions that have the features of true
propositions.21

The debate here has hinged around whether or not art can be thought of in any sense on the
model of making statements of a propositional kind like those normally made in ordinary
language or in symbolic forms that can be translated into ordinary language. It is highly
doubtful whether the visual arts, music, dance, drama, or even the more imaginative aspects
of literature can be fitted neatly into this paradigm. It is virtually certain that they cannot
without loss of much that is considered not only of value, but is essentially characteristic
of them. Thus even if the debate is resolved in Hirst’s favour it is only likely to show, at an
improbable best, that some part of, some types of, art might be thought of as propositional.
This would not meet the main objection, which is the intuitive belief that the richer aspects
of art, music and literature, form of knowledge or not, propositional or not, have a claim
to be included in the content and substance of a liberal education; nor will it abate the
consequent suspicion that there must be something wrong with a theory that seeks out a
highly speculative cognitive core in the arts as being what is most fundamental to them,
and by so doing relegates beyond the pale of a liberal education precisely those aspects of
art most valued by those who practise and appreciate it.
The difficulty about religion is not quite the same. There is little doubt that for many
people there is a body of true propositions constituting religion in general or, more likely,
a particular religion. The difficulty here is that it is precisely the suggestion that this body
consists of true propositions that is challenged by other, equally intelligent, people. This
is an obvious enough social phenomenon, yet it presents itself as an oddity on Hirst’s
account in two ways. Firstly, religion could only be included in the curriculum of a liberal
education on some kind of (c)-type argument—i.e. it would be there because at least some
people claim it to be a form of knowledge. But what of those who claim it is not? And
what proportion of people would have to be in each camp to settle the issue one way or
another? For note the second aspect of the oddity: where there is dispute as to whether
some community of discourse is actually a form of knowledge or not there is no truth
test apparently available to decide the matter, for while truth tests are, on Hirst’s account,
unique to each form of knowledge, there is no overriding truth test that can be applied. If
it is claimed that it is philosophy, itself a form of knowledge, that is to fill this honorific
role by virtue of its second-order nature, surely this in itself would be controversial? Are
we really to suppose that theologians will see judgments about the nature of the subject of
their enquiries as purely philosophical? Will artists, musicians and poets readily accept the
adjudication of philosophers as to the nature of their activities?
What all this reveals, I believe, is that, whereas the forms-of-knowledge thesis looks
as if areas of knowledge are to earn their place in the curriculum of a liberal eduation by
emerging as distinctive and irreducible after appropriate logical and conceptual analysis, in
fact some at least of those suggested are listed because they are observed to be communities
of discourse of largish numbers of intelligent people. These are, of course, no more than
empirically observed claims to the status that the logical and conceptual analysis would
give if it could.
58â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
What is also revealed by these considerations is that the content and substance of a
liberal education, on Hirst’s account, would not be so rich as appears at first sight. In
fact, when all the qualifications are noted the basis would be very narrow indeed and this
narrowness has led to significant criticism. Jane Roland Martin attacks quite vigorously:

The received theory’s liberally educated person will be taught to see the world through the
lenses of the seven forms of knowledge, if seven there be, but not to act in the world. Nor
will that person be encouraged to acquire feelings and emotions. The theory’s liberally
educated person will be provided with knowledge about others, but will not be taught to
care about their welfare, let alone act kindly towards them. That person will be given some
understanding of society, but will not be taught to feel its injustices or even to be concerned
over its fate. The received theory conceives of a liberally educated person as an ivory tower
person: one who can reason, but has no desire to solve problems in the real world; one who
understands science, but does not worry about the uses to which it is put; one who grasps
the concepts of biology, but is not disposed to exercise or eat wisely; one who can reach
flawless moral conclusions, but has neither the sensitivity nor the skill to carry them out
effectively.22

This is somewhat heated polemic but most of it is justifiable criticism. I have already
exampled literature and the fine arts as areas where only an attenuated form of both would
really earn their place. Martin’s reference to moral education is certainly fair comment.
Here Hirst makes a distinction between moral understanding, which is properly part of a
liberal education, and the development of moral character and commitment which extends
beyond a liberal education. Hirst is obviously concerned about these kinds of limitations,
perhaps far more so than Martin gives him credit for, but he is prepared to pay the price
because of the fundamentality achieved by his analysis. This also has the effect of making
Hirst distinguish, as already noted, between a liberal education consisting of involvement
in the discriminable forms of knowledge and a wider general education still to be separable
from specialist training:

To equate such an education (i.e. a liberal education) with ‘general education’ is also
unacceptable if that is taken to be everything a total education should cover other than
‘specialist’ elements. The lack of concern for moral commitment, as distinct from moral
understanding, that it seems to imply, is a particularly significant limitation to this concept’s
usefulness. Nevertheless, it emphasizes, by drawing them together, precisely those elements
in a total education that are logically basic, and the exclusion of all logically secondary
considerations gives it importance at a time when the ends of education are often looked
at purely pragmatically.23

That I sympathize with this attempt to find what is basic or fundamental has been made
abundantly plain; but where is the division between what is logically basic and what is
purely pragmatic and instrumental to be drawn? Hirst’s account leaves off in a peculiarly
unsatisfactory way. There is to be a class of general education which all should have and
which will have things like physical education and moral education in its full sense within
it. There is to be a smaller class of liberal education, a part of general education in the
sense that all should have it, but more limited in that it should contain only the forms of
 Three accounts consideredâ•… 59
knowledge as strictly characterized. Then there might be all kinds of instrumental activities,
variously justified and presumably not compulsory for all, beyond both the former.
I have already noted the difficulty of thinking that the strict characterization of the
forms of knowledge, and the way this justifies a place for an area of ‘knowledge’, is at all
straightforward; but there are two other difficulties to note. Martin draws attention to the
fact that the term ‘liberal education’ is not neutral but value-laden. To say that something
should be a part of liberal education is to attribute a special kind of value to it. It follows
from the justification of a liberal education that I have discussed in previous chapters that
I would agree with this. Thus it is not a matter of indifference to relegate certain parts
of some activities to sit somewhere in general education but not in liberal education. To
do so is inevitably either to devalue them or to suggest that somehow the importance of
the elements to be included in liberal education is perhaps not so great as was at first
claimed. The other, and connected, difficulty is that in supposing that, as well as liberal
education, there is to be a wider general education containing elements that all should
have, a justificatory gap arises. For the liberal education components Hirst provides, as we
have noted, a justification in terms of a presupposition argument. For the general education
area, though we are told that all pupils should have the elements within it, like physical
education and the development of moral character, we are nowhere told why. If there is a
justification that appeals to common humanness in some way, and not merely to particular
instrumental needs, then surely these are parts of a liberal education too? I find it very
difficult to see what would justify the inclusion of any activity or any inquiry in a general
education for all, separable from any kind of instrumental education, that is not at the same
time being justified as part of a liberal education. This is why, up to this chapter, I have
written of a ‘liberal general education’ or, sometimes, of a ‘general liberal education’,
where ‘general’ does not only mean ‘to be taken by all’ but means also ‘of general rather
than specific application’.
In particular, I find it difficult to see why it is only to be those parts of literature, art
and morality, and other aspects of human action which can be construed as bodies of true
propositions which are to be within liberal education, whilst those parts of these areas of
human ‘goings-on’ which are the actions, makings, doings, dispositions, expressions and
interactions which give meaning, point and significance to these propositions are to be
excluded.
These difficulties are generated to a very large extent by the way in which Hirst uses the
concept of meaning. ‘Meaning’, for Hirst, is always used in the context of the meaning of
statements. He can thus always make the connection between ‘meaning’ and ‘knowledge’
mentioned earlier. For a statement to be meaningful, so the argument runs, we must at
least in some way be able to indicate what would make the statement true or false. To
analyse meaning, then, becomes an analysis of knowledge truth tests. As we shall see, Hirst
uses this conception of meaning in a sharp attack upon Philip Phenix who claimed to be
examining different kinds of meaning. Verificationist theories of meaning have run into a
good deal of criticism, often because of their empiricist or positivist connections.24 Hirst
is not open to most of these criticisms largely because he does not say what kind of truth
tests would apply, only that there must be some. When the logical positivists, for example,
suggested a verificationist theory of meaning to depend upon truth tests they also suggested
that there were only two kinds of truth test and explained what these were, namely those of
60â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
empirical observation and experiment and those of analytic logic. Hirst suggests that there
are seven but makes no serious attempt to show what these would be.
Now, of course, the meaning of statements is one important way in which we can talk
about meaning, and when we do so the relationship between meaning and the way in which
statements are to be tested for truth and falsity does seem significant. Even so one would
need to be careful about characterizing knowledge as bodies of true propositions in the
light of Karl Popper’s claim that science advances by continuous falsifying of propositions
and that verification in the sense of establishing truths is not what goes on at all. Even if we
took a slightly modified view of the relationship between the meaning of statements and
tests of truth and falsity, to take account of Popper’s views, it would still surely be wrong to
suppose that meaning only attaches to statements. Hirst more than once refers approvingly
to Wittgenstein’s ideas of meaning, language games and forms of life as reinforcing his own
ideas, but I am not convinced that Wittgenstein actually provides such reinforcement. For
Wittgenstein the meaning of words and sentences was to be seen in their actual use in more
or less self-contained language games themselves set in forms of life. In his ‘Philosophical
Investigations’ he gives examples of the multiplicity of such language games:
Giving orders and obeying them
Describing the appearance of an object, or giving its measurements
Constructing an object from a description (a drawing)
Reporting an event
Speculating about an event
Forming and testing an hypothesis
Presenting the results of an experiment in tables and diagrams
Making up a story; reading it
Play-acting
Singing catches
Guessing riddles
Making a joke; telling it
Solving a problem in practical arithmetic
Translating from one language into another
Asking, thanking, cursing, greeting, praying
and he goes on to say

It is interesting to compare the multiplicity of the tools in language and of the ways they
are used, the multiplicity of kinds of words and sentences, with what logicians have said
about the structure of language.25

The point here is that much of this is not to do with statements, yet is nevertheless meaningful
on Wittgenstein’s account. Whatever Hirst may be doing, Wittgenstein was not reducing
meaning to seven sets of charac terizations!
Perhaps more importantly, ‘meaning’ has a different kind of sense which is connected
with notions like significance and importance. It is in this sense that people can talk of
religion or art being significant in their lives or giving meaning to their lives. This sense is
not metaphorical or parasitical on the ‘meaning of statements’ usage, but is rooted in the
 Three accounts consideredâ•… 61
language in its own right. The import, signification and denotation of words, and consequently
of sentences embodying propositions, is a widespread, but certainly not paradigmatic sense
of ‘meaning’ as any study of the appropriate ‘OED’ articles will show. People mean to do
things, in the sense of intention; they have meanings in the sense of purposes; and they find
meaning in the sense of finding importance or significance in something or some activity.
Heidegger, in his subtle considerations of the relation of language to the being of man,
criticizes the tendency to limit considerations of signification to the study of statements
and assertions, and suggests that a proper philosophical investigation would need to take
much more into account:

we must inquire into the basic forms in which it is possible to articulate anything
understandable, and to do so in accordance with significations; and this articulation
must not be confined to entities within-the-world which we cognize by considering them
theoretically, and which we express in sentences.26

‘[T]he basic forms in which it is possible to articulate anything understandable’ sound

remarkably like Hirst’s forms of knowledge, but the difference is immediately signalled
by what Heidegger goes on to say; for Hirst limits the analysis of the forms to precisely
those theoretical sentence expressions that Heidegger warns us against. Heidegger, like
Wittgenstein, accepts a richness of articulatable understandings that Hirst appears to deny.
Thus, when someone claims that art constitutes a discriminable way of finding meaning in
his experience he is not necessarily committed to reducing the significant part of art to a
body of true propositions or their equivalents. He is not required to do this even if, in some
sense, he relates art to truth, as indeed Heidegger does, for ‘truth’ too can have meanings
other than the correctness to be found in testable statements, as Heidegger argues in his
lecture, The Origin of the Work of Art.27 Our art-lover (not necessarily a Heideggerian!)
might be talking, and quite properly, about the significance and importance for him of
certain kinds of makings, doings, expressions, appreciations and dispositions. Similarly,
‘Nature means much to me,’ is not a nonsensical utterance, neither is its significance to be
fully rendered by a succession of subsumed true propositions.
There is thus a richer, and perfectly proper, sense of ‘meaning’ which might allow us to
reunite those important areas of human thought and action which Hirst’s account appears to
dismember, and if this is so we might yet gather into the content and substance of a liberal
education those creative and expressive activities which many people intuitively believe
have a rightful place.
Regretfully, then, I must for the time being say of Hirst’s account, seminal though it is
in its determination to seek out fundamentality, and illuminating as it is in its attempt to
characterize the forms of knowledge, it is handicapped by its particularly strict characterization
of meaning and thus of the forms of knowledge, and this leads to an unduly impoverished
basis for a liberal education, especially in the areas of the arts and the humanities. I
must now look, rather more briefly, at two other attempts to delineate such a content.

6.2 Philip Phenix and the realms of meaning

Philip Phenix produced his main theory of the curriculum for a general education in 1964
in his book ‘Realms of Meaning’, though there was some indication of his line of thought
62â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
in an earlier work, ‘Philosophy of Education’, in 1958. One view of the work of Phenix is
to say that he has tried to do the same job as Hirst but that his logical analysis is faulty and
collapses plainly under the criticism of Hirst. There is certainly justification for this view,
as I shall try to show; but it is possible, I believe, to take another view of what Phenix has
done which is much more favourable to the account. After some brief exposition I shall say
something about each of these views.
Phenix starts his account by a consideration of human nature and he is obviously
attracted by the classical philosophical description of man as a rational animal where ‘This
power of thought distinguishes man from everything else in the creation. In human nature
reason is of the essence.’28 But Phenix also, and importantly, has reservations about this
description:

This philosophical answer suffers from the limitation that such ideas as rationality, reason
and mind tend to be narrowly construed as referring to the processes of logical thinking.
The life of feeling, conscience, imagination, and other processes that are not rational in the
strict sense are excluded by such a construction, and the idea of man as a rational animal in
the strict sense is accordingly rejected for being too one-sided.29

The concept that Phenix proposes instead of rationality is meaning, a concept of some
importance which we have already found necessary to examine at some length in talking
about Hirst. In one sense Phenix obviously sees ‘meaning’ as a convenient word embodying
a richer conception of reason and mind than the strictly ratiocinative idea that he has
rejected; but he also has a notion of a very wide range of different meanings which are
probably not trapped at all within normal, not necessarily strict, conceptions of reason:

This term is intended to express the full range of connotations of reason or mind. Thus,
there are different meanings contained in activities of organic adjustment, in perception,
in logical thinking, in social organization, in speech, in artistic creation, in self-awareness,
in purposive decision, in moral judgment, in the consciousness of time, and in the activity
of worship. All these distinctive human functions are varieties of meaning, and all of them
together—along with others that might be described—comprise the life of meaning, which
is the essence of the life of man.30

It appears obvious to Phenix, though clearly not so to non-naturalists, that:

If the essence of human nature is in the life of meaning, then the proper aim of education
is to promote the growth of meaning. To fulfill this aim, the educator needs to understand
the kinds of meaning that have proven effective in the development of civilization and to
construct the curriculum of studies on the basis of these meanings.31

In order to make this broad conception of meaning, however, into a sensible and workable
basis for a curriculum, Phenix now has a problem of selection, the more so as he believes
that: ‘Theoretically there is no limit to the varieties of meaning. Different principles of
meaning formation can be devised ad infinitum.’32 He rejects the idea of an a priori analysis
of classes of meaning in favour of an attempt to determine ‘the forms of meaning that have
 Three accounts consideredâ•… 63
actually demonstrated their fecundity’.33 These he finds in the actually established bodies
of scholarly and intellectual activity bound together in communities of discourse:

comprised of persons bound together by common responsibility for a particular kind

of meaning. Each such community has its characteristic discipline or rule by which the
common responsibility is discharged. The discipline expresses the particular logic of the
meaning in question.34

It now looks as if the problem of selection is to be solved anthropologically. We are to

look around and observe the great and significant communities of discourse, transcending
barriers of class, nation and time. Using criteria of growth and fruitfulness—Phenix cannot
escape the debt all American philosophers of education owe to Dewey!—we select those
most important shared cultural enterprises into which the younger generation of the world
should be initiated. Thus expressed the idea is attractive. It avoids some of the difficulties of
Hirst’s account, since we do not fall into problems about truth tests. Religion, for example,
is clearly a manifestation of human being, quite apart from the truth of its propositions.
Phenix seems to point to this when he says:

Whether or not the claim of the religious believer is affirmed, the type of meaning intended
by the faithful should be clear. Regardless of the results of the search, religious inquiry
is directed toward ultimacy, in the sense of the most comprehensive, most profound,
most unified meanings obtainable. At the very least, faith refers to an ideal and a hope
for maximum completeness, depth and integrity of vision. On these minimal terms, in
which no transcendent realities are posited, everyone should be able to acknowledge some
religious meanings.35

Unfortunately, Phenix does not go on consistently to work out the implications of such an
anthropological or phenomenological approach. He is lured back into logical analysis. We
might have anticipated this since in enumerating the custodians of meaning to be discerned
within human culture there is a patent attachment to those who manipulate propositions,
rather than meanings in other forms. For example: artistcritics are mentioned, not just
artists; theologians, not just religious believers; moralists, rather than moral people; and
scientists, rather than technologists. Perhaps the areas of meaning are not being selected
quite so empirically, after all; at least there is ambiguity. The ambiguity extends into the
classification that Phenix proposes. On the one hand it is to be no more than a matter of
convenience, not really logically fundamental in some Hirstian manner:

There is no single basis of categorization that any body of material forces on the investigator.
Classifications are to some extent arbitrary, depending on the uses for which they are
intended. Since the purpose of classifying meanings in education is to facilitate learning, it
is desirable to organize the disciplines along lines of general similarity of logical structure.
In this manner certain basic ways of knowing can be described, and these may be used to
allocate studies for general education, that is, for the education of persons in their essential
humanness.36

On the other hand, the logical classification actually proposed has all the suggestion of
a fundamental, a priori classification of cognitive meaning. It just does not seem like a
64â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
relatively arbitrary device of selection. For what is proposed rests on the claim that all
cognitive meaning has two logical aspects, those of quantity and quality. Quantity can be
expressed as singular, general or comprehensive; and quality can be expressed as fact, form
Or norm. One would have thought that a full permutation of these would give nine different
kinds of meaning, but Phenix combines them into six, as shown in Table 6.1.
Phenix is quite clear that a proper curriculum for general education will enabie a pupil
to be involved at some depth in each and every one of the six realms of meaning, and it is
worth concluding this brief exposition by quoting him fairly fully on this:

A program for the curriculum of general education in schools may then be conceived as
providing for instruction in all six of the fundamental types of meaning—in language,
science, art, personal

Table 6.1 Logical classification of meanings37

Generic classes € Realms of €

Disciplines
Quantity Quality € meaning €
General Form € Symbolics € Ordinary language, mathematics, non-discursive
symbolic forms
General Fact € Empirics € Physical sciences, life sciences, psychology,
social sciences
Singular Form € Esthetics € Music, visual art, art of movement, literature
Singular Fact € Synnoetics € Philosophy, psychology, literature, religion, in
their existential aspects
Singular Norm Ethics € The varied special areas of moral and ethical
General Norm € concern
Comprehensive Fact € History
Comprehensive Nrom Synoptics Religion
Comprehensive Form € Philosophy

knowledge, ethics and synoptics—over a period, say, of fourteen years, with some
opportunity for concurrent specialization where individual capabilities and interests and
social needs indicate its desirability. To achieve a well balanced program it may further be
recommended that the program be divided approximately equally among the six realms….
For example, during fourteen years of general education a student could study not
only his own everyday language, but also mathematics and one or two foreign languages.
He could study several of the sciences—physical, biological, psychological and social—
and, among the arts, at least…music, the visual arts, the arts of movement (in physical
education), and literature. He could have regular opportunities for gaining personal insight,
through a program of social activities and of work with skilled guidance counsellors. He
could have instruction and practice in making moral decisions, through the study of moral
problems and the methods of ethical enquiry consummated by responsible participation in
decision making where the common good is at stake. Finally, he could be given a thorough
 Three accounts consideredâ•… 65
grounding in history and a basic understanding of religious commitment and philosophic
interpretation.38

This is undeniably a rich and attractive package; so much so that few people would deny
that recipients of such an education, conducted in the spirit Phenix clearly intends, would
have received a liberal education. The tragedy is that the attempts by Phenix to set all this
in an explanatory and justificatory framework, to say clearly, that is, why pupils should
have such a package, have been partly misguided and partly ambiguous, and have thus
provided a focus for quite destructive criticism. One of the main critics, as might have
been expected, is Hirst in the paper already noticed. Here Hirst leaves few of Phenix’s
logical weaknesses unprobed. His most damaging criticism is that the classification of
Phenix rests on a confusion, namely that there is no consistent treatment of the logical
objects of knowledge enabling them to be compared in different kinds of meaning. There
is, claims Hirst, ‘ambiguity about the objects of knowledge and appropriate classification
criteria for them’.39 Hirst is maintaining, of course, that the account he himself gives,
whereby the logical objects of knowledge are true propositions classifiable on the basis
of their necessary features of central concepts, conceptual structures and truth tests, is the
only coherent and consistent way of achieving the classification of meaning that Phenix
attempts. As compared with this, the objects of knowledge, or meaning, for Phenix are
sometimes logical but sometimes what Hirst calls ‘everyday’ objects. Hirst points to the
way in which this confuses the issue in the examples of Phenix’s realms of ‘symbolics’ and
‘synnoetics’. In the case of symbolics Hirst says:

Only if the objects of knowledge are taken to be ‘objects’ in the everyday, non-philosophical
sense, does it seem to me to be possible to assert that the domain of symbolics is that of a
distinct type of knowledge…. Symbols as such designate no logically distinct domain of
knowledge any more than any other particular ‘object’, in the non-philosophical sense,
does. A knowledge of chairs, say, may be of many different fundamental kinds, scientific,
esthetic, even moral or religious. No ‘objects’ in this sense pick out logically distinct types
of knowledge.40

A similar point is made about synnoetics: ‘Again a category of “objects” in the non-
philosophical sense is the focus of a type of knowledge, existential experience of these
being a second distinctive factor.’41 It is clear from Phenix’s own account of synnoetics that
the type of understanding he has in mind here is ‘relational insight’ or ‘direct awareness’,
and that: ‘This personal or relational knowledge is concrete, direct, and existential. It may
apply to other persons, to one-self, or even to things.’42 Since it is direct and not concrete,
what this form of knowledge or understanding does not apply to is propositions, for this
would be indirect and abstract. It is not propositions about people that are known in this
way, but people; not propositions about oneself, but oneself. Hirst is therefore right to
point out the varied types of objects of knowledge that Phenix is dealing with, and to
compare this with his own more rigorous consistency. I do not see, however, that Hirst is
right in all cases to claim that the objects dealt with by Phenix are ‘everyday’ rather than
‘philosophicar’. True propositions are not the only logical objects of knowledge generally
recognized by philosophers, as Hirst himself admits. Knowledge with a direct object
is accepted as a kind of knowledge by many philosophers, especially when discussing
interpersonal understanding. It is therefore somewhat arbitrary of Hirst to rule this out of
66â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
classificationary respectability simply because it does not fit the logical tidiness of basing
the whole thing on true propositions.
Hirst is also critical of the way in which Phenix rests his account on distinctions of
fact, form and norm. One difficulty here seems to be that, on the one hand, form and
norm are to be distinguished from facts, yet on the other they are to be classified as certain
kinds of facts. Another is that norm is limited to ethics when it seems fairly obviously to
have something to do with aesthetics, which Phenix limits to form. Further difficulties
arise from Phenix’s handling of quantity. Why, asks Hirst, are historical facts alleged to be
comprehensive when clearly many of them are singular? Is symbolics always to be general,
even in relation to mathematics and non-discursive symbolic forms?
Lest it be argued that Phenix was doing a different job, more connected to the idea
of meaning than to knowledge, Hirst is at some pains to claim that this is not so. First
Hirst claims that this is ‘quite contrary to Phenix’s own account of what he has sought to
do’.43 I am not convinced that this is quite so obvious as Hirst says, as I shall try to show
below. Hirst is concerned to show, as I have already mentioned, that ‘the categorization of
meaning is in the end a matter of categorizing knowledge or at least knowledge claims’ and
he claims that Phenix himself, ‘implicitly at least’, accepted this. Hirst does appear to make
some concessions to the idea that meaning is a wider concept than knowledge:

It is quite true that the domain of what is meaningful extends vastly beyond the domain
of what is known. For every true proposition that can be the object of knowledge there
is an infinite number of false propositions which are meaningful but not the objects of
knowledge. Even among utterances meaning extends beyond stating propositions to a
myriad of other uses of language in commands, questions, curses, etc. Actions too and
events can be said to have meanings. What is more, appreciating the meaning of something
may well at times have the kind of dimensions that Phenix outlines.44

This seems like an important acceptance of Phenix’s position. But Hirst then goes on to use
the argument we have already encountered in the previous section; namely, that meaning is
impossible without concepts, concepts have to have criteria of application and these involve
truth tests for statements that something is an ‘X’. Thus ‘the notions of meaning and true
propositions, and therefore meaning and knowledge, are logically connected.’ So meaning
does reduce to knowledge and true propositions, after all! One might question, however,
whether what Hirst has to say about the necessary connection of conceptualization with
meaning really does rebut the argument that not all that is meaningful is made up of true
propositions. For example, to utter the imperative ‘Open that door’ is to utter something
that is meaningful and yet is not a proposition, as Hirst acknowledges. Now, of course,
the concepts of ‘open’ and ‘door’ could only be operated with by one who was in at least
some sense aware of appropriate criteria for distinguishing such concepts from others,
and thus aware of the truth tests of propositions expressing such distinguishing criteria, as
Hirst also points out. Neither of these two claims appears to be controversial; it is the way
they are connected by Hirst that causes the trouble. Hirst wants to say that because of all
he has said about concepts, even though ‘Open that door’ is not a proposition, its meaning
rests on the grasping of certain true propositions asserting what ‘open’ is and ‘door’ is.
Surely what this shows is only that there is a necessary connection between meaning and
 Three accounts consideredâ•… 67
conceptualization, and thus between meaning and true propositions, but not that there is
thereby a total or sufficient connection. When we note that imperatives are meaningful,
though not propositions, we are still asserting something significant; and we are certainly
demonstrating that an utterance does not have to be a proposition, true or otherwise, in
order to be meaningful. Thus we are demonstrating that the objects of meaning are not
identical with objects of knowledge, as Hirst seems to want us to suppose, though they may
have, as Hamlyn carefully puts it, ‘certain conceptual connections’.
In so far as Hirst does battle with Phenix on terms of his (Hirst’s) own choosing, there is
little doubt that he wins. Phenix’s analysis and classification is open to charges of ambiguity
and confusion and inconsistency. Most of the points vigorously made by Hirst are well
made if we assume that Phenix was attempting a classification of fundamental knowledge
in something like the same way as Hirst. Yet one emerges from the rather one-sided debate
with a strong suspicion that the victory is not somehow as complete as Hirst sees it to be,
and this is mainly because Phenix’s treatment of meaning is not exactly as Hirst sees it in
his desire to equate it with his own conception of knowledge. If one takes a more flexible
approach, deliberately seeking in Phenix’s work for a different interpretation of a more
cultural and phenomenological kind, I believe it is there to be found, often partly buried by
the misguided attempt at analysis. Let me now try to quarry this alternative view.
It is necessary for this purpose to recall what was said about meaning in the previous
section. There I claimed that the ‘meaning of statements’ sense of ‘meaning’ was certainly
not the only sense that could be given to the word, and that there was another range of
senses connected with the ideas of significance, purpose, importance and value. It is
in reference to this kind of usage that one can see an alternative interpretation of what
Phenix was doing. When Phenix says, for example: ‘This thesis grows out of a concept of
human nature as rooted in meaning and of human life as directed towards the fulfillment
of meaning,’45 this has more of a ring of concern for meaning in all that people do in their
actions and makings, rather than a concern solely for the meaning of written or spoken
statements. He further affirms that one temptation of a revival of interest in knowledge:

is to construe knowledge too narrowly in purely intellectualistic terms. The present analysis
shows that meanings are of many kinds and that the full development of human beings
requires education in a variety of realms of meaning.46

A connection, even an identification, of meaning with a wiser conception including values

and purposes seems clearly enough intended, especially where Phenix is expressing his
fears of meaningfulness:

The human situation is such that mankind is always threatened by forces that destroy
meaning. Values, purposes, and understandings are fragile achievements and give way all
too readily to attitudes of futility, frustration and doubt.47

In particular Phenix appears to claim meanings in the areas of synnoetics and ethics that
are not limited to the propositional. Phenix uses the term ‘synnoetics’ to pick out the
specially direct and experiential knowledge and understanding that people claim to have of
themselves, one another and of things; and he says of such knowledge:
68â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
Thus synnoetics signifies ‘relational insight’ or ‘direct awareness’. It is analogous in
the sphere of knowing to sympathy in the sphere of feeling. This personal or relational
knowledge is concrete, direct, and existential.48

Similarly:

ethics includes moral meanings that express obligation rather than fact, perceptual form,
or awareness of relation. In contrast to the sciences, which are concerned with abstract
cognitive understanding, to the arts, which express idealized esthetic perceptions, and to
personal knowledge, which reflects intersubjective understanding, morality has to do with
personal conduct that is based on free, responsible, deliberate decision.49

Here we seem to have at least the following counted as meanings, as well as statements
embodying propositions, which would of course also be counted:
(i) relational insight;
(ii) direct awareness or apprehension;
(iii) expression of obligations, presumably in actions or dispositions;
(iv) idealized perceptions of an aesthetic kind;
(v) intersubjective understanding.
Now, of course, it is possible to argue, as Hirst does, and as indeed I have myself in
another place, that some of these claims to meaning are not very coherent claims. But,
as I have argued above, some of the claims to the status of a Hirstian form of knowledge
are not very coherent either! If the judgment of importance and value is to be at least
partly empirical and phenomenological, like Hirst’s claims to forms of knowledge status,
then it must be acknowledged that claims are extensively made for understandings and
meanings of the kind Phenix indicates. In other words, whilst Phenix’s logical analysis
may be faulty, his perception of what people actually do in their attempts to find meaning
and understanding, his grasp of the phenomenon of the human search for meaning, seems
sharper than Hirst’s.
Phenix actually gives summaries of his position in the later part of his work in which the
logical analysis is virtually abandoned in favour of an account of the phenomenologically
observable proclivities of human beings:

human nature itself supplies the clue to the minimal scope of the curriculum. Human
beings are characterized by a few basic types of functioning. They use symbols, they
abstract and generalize, they create and perceive interesting objects, they relate to each
other personally, they make judgments of good and evil, they reenact the past, they seek
the ultimate, and they comprehensively analyse, evaluate and synthesize. These are the
universal, pervasive, and perennial forms of distinctively human behaviour. They are the
foundation for all civilized existence. All of them are deeply woven into the texture of life
whenever it transcends the level of biological and social survival.
…the curriculum should at least provide for learning in all six of the realms of meaning:
symbolics, empirics, esthetics, synnoetics, ethics and synoptics. If any one of the six is
 Three accounts consideredâ•… 69
missing, the person lacks a basic ingredient in experience…. Each makes possible a
particular mode of functioning without which the person cannot live according to his own
nature.50

This is not only interesting and persuasive, but it owes nothing to all the earlier analysis of
meaning into the singular, the general and the comprehensive, or fact, form and norm, which
Hirst properly criticizes. In that this thesis is separable from the unacceptable logical analysis
it is also separable from most, if not all, of the criticism Hirst has mounted against it. What
we are discerning, then, in this alternative interpretation, is a quasi-anthropological, or at
least phenomenological, investigation into the fundamental meaning-cultures of mankind.
One can criticize Phenix, of course, for muddling this up with something pretending to a
sharper philosophical focus, but we would be wrong, I think, to join Hirst in rejecting the
whole account because of this. There are two reasons for this caution.
Firstly, I have already indicated that Hirst’s own account rests much more than appears
at first sight on straightforwardly observed empirical claims to certain kinds of knowledge
status. There is no need to repeat all that has already been said on this; but, by way of example,
it is interesting to compare Hirst and Phenix on religion. Hirst is unable to maintain that
religion is a form of knowledge, with distinctive central concepts, a conceptual framework
and truth tests, since large numbers of intelligent people deny this. So the argument is that
religion should appear in the curriculum of a liberal education because many people claim
to see religion as a distinctive form of knowledge. This is empirical or phenomenological
observation. Phenix sees religion as concerned with meanings to do with the ultimate. He,
too, cannot claim that all people perceive such meanings or accept that religion is thus
meaningful. Religion would therefore be dealt with in the curriculum because a sufficiently
large number of people give to religion the meaning and significance attributed to it by
Phenix. This is empirical or phenomenological observation. The two views are not all that
different when it comes down to it. Both writers try to stretch their logical analysis beyond
what it will bear, and fall back on empirical claims for what they actually want in the
curriculum. What is wrong with both of them is the failure to acknowledge this.
The second reason for not completely rejecting Phenix’s account is that there is a
richness about Phenix’s awareness of phenomenological nuances in meaning that we shall
need to keep in mind in delineating our own account.
As with Hirst, then, I am bound to say that the account of Phenix, interesting and
sensitive though it is, will not do as it stands. The justification and analysis are ambiguous
and unclear, and much of Hirst’s criticism is justified. However, if looked at in the less
philosophical and more phenomenological way that I have described, there are insights
here to be made use of in trying to fashion a more coherent account of the content and
substance of a liberal education.

6.3 John White and subjective values

In this section I shall consider the views put forward by John White in his book, ‘Towards a
Compulsory Curriculum’, which appeared in 1973.51 White has recently, however, produced
another book, ‘The Aims of Education Restated’, 1982,52 which presents a rather different
point of view. Since there appears to me to be distinctively different emphases in the two
works, and since the influence of the former work has been considerable, I shall retain the
70â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
intention to treat mainly of the argument in the earlier work, reserving some remarks for
the more recent work until the critical part of the section.
The main interest of the earlier work lies in its explicit espousal of a subjective theory
of value, and it is worth pausing a moment to be clear as to what this means. To say that
values are subjective is to say that there is no sense in talking of values unless what we
are talking about, the object of value, is actually valued by at least one individual. On this
account, what is valuable is what is valued: things are seen to be valuable because people
value them, and for no other reason. In the extreme form of the view there would even be
no point in providing reasons why a person ought to value something, since once there are
reasons of this kind attached to values they become objective rather than subjective. This
distinction is an important one for educational decisions in this way: If it is possible to
point to something as being objectively valuable, then it is possible to move from that to a
claim that it, or something about it, should be taught to pupils as part of a liberal education.
The only issue would be one of how objectively valuable the thing was, and whether there
might not be other things of even more objective value. Hirst’s theory is essentially like
this in the sense that the forms of knowledge are to be seen as objectively valuable; there
are good reasons, spelled out in a transcendental or presupposition argument, for valuing
them; and therefore they should collectively constitute a liberal education in which pupils
are not only brought to be able to operate in these ways of knowing and understanding, but
are brought to permanently care about and value them.
I am not concerned now with whether Hirst is right about all this. The present point is
that he does offer an argument to support the claimed objectivity of the values in which he
wants to involve pupils.
Now suppose that a writer on the curriculum believes values to be subjective. That is,
he believes that there are no reasons for believing that any one thing is more valuable than
anything else, but that things are only to be valued as individuals happen to value them or as
instruments to such individually valued ends. Such a writer now has a problem if he or she
wishes to make curriculum proposals, for it seems that the only proposals consistent with
a subjective theory of value would be those of an extremely child-centred kind, whereby
children would choose, more or less at all times, what they wished to do. Some writers,
P.S.Wilson for example,53 appear to have said more or less this. It is the special significance
of what White has done that he has tried to combine this belief in the subjectivity of values
with suggestions for compulsory and common elements in the curriculum. Few would
guess from the title of his book that it is driven throughout by a passionate concern for
individual liberty, an affirmation of individuals’ right to determine their own values, and
a strong belief that it is the duty of anyone who would coerce or compel pupils to produce
satisfactory justificatory arguments for such compulsions.
White is quite clear that what is wanted for its own sake can only be determined by an
individual actually doing this wanting on his own behalf, and that it cannot be determined
for a person by someone else. He presents what he calls an ideal case, which is quite
important to the subsequent argument:

In the ideal case what is wanted for its own sake on reflection is what a man would want
for its own sake, given at least (a) that he knows of all the other things which he might
have preferred at that time and (b) that he has carefully considered priorities among the
 Three accounts consideredâ•… 71
different choices, bearing in mind not only his present situation but also whether he is
likely to alter his priorities in the future. ((b) effectively rules out any preference adopted
in a state of depression, euphoria, etc.: a depressed person is shut off by his depression from
considering certain options which would otherwise be open to him.)54

Any person, considering what might be intrinsically worthwhile for him, can be in
something like this ideal position:

Knowing nothing of my wants, someone else has no grounds at all for saying that any
particular thing that I may want to do is intrinsically valuable. But I am in a different
position. Let us say that I have as broad as practicably possible an acquaintance with the
various things I might want and have reflected on priorities among these over a considerable
period and come to a settled opinion about them. I have some grounds for saying that the
ends I now prefer are the most intrinsically worthwhile since I am in something like the
ideal situation—en route, even if I can never hope to arrive there.55

White draws our attention to three important features of the intrinsically valuable as he has
described it:

First, it is something formal not substantive. We cannot identify it with any particular
pursuit or way of life, the reflective life, for example…. Second, it must be subjective in
the sense that it can only be given substantive content once one knows what a particular
individual wants in the ideal situation—and this may vary from person to person. On
the other hand, taken at the formal level, it is the same for all men, and is in this sense
objective. Third,…it is something ideal, not in any value sense of this term, but in the sense
that, strictly speaking, it may well be unrealizable because of the conditions (a) and (b).56

Such a view of what is intrinsically worthwhile enables White to dismiss the extreme child-
centred view of not trying to teach the child anything he does not at present want to know
as being irrational. What we have to do is to get the pupil as near as possible to the ideal
situation. Leaving the child free to choose now would not be the best way of doing that:

The least harmful course we can follow is to equip him, as far as possible, for the ideal
situation…. To do this, we must ensure (a) that he knows about as many activities or ways
of life as possible which he may want to choose for their own sake, and (b) that he is able
to reflect on priorities among them from the point of view not only of the present moment
but as far as possible of his life as a whole. We are justified, therefore, in restricting his
liberty as far as is necessary to ensure (a) and (b): we are right to make him unfree now so
as to give him as much autonomy as possible later on.57

Before looking at the next move White makes, which takes us closer to curriculum content,
it is worth noting how White anticipates objections. We might argue, for example, that
knowledge, reflection and autonomy are all being objectively valued and that the position
is not quite so totally subjective after all. White recognizes this and has answers to such
objections. I do not find these answers convincing and I shall return to them in criticism later.
72â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
Reflection, says White, might appear to be valued since it is necessary to work out, in
the ideal situation, what is intrinsically worthwhile for oneself:

But this is not so. Just because the man has reflected on what he most wants for its own
sake, it does not follow that the answer he comes up with must be some form of reflective
pursuit. It might be: he might decide on philosophy or writing tragedies. But, equally, it
might not be, since he might choose ten-pin bowling or swimming.58

On autonomy White is similarly clear that although it must be pursued as an educational

aim this is only to allow the pupil eventually to choose what to value. At that stage he might
choose to abandon his autonomy:

I am not advocating any necessary commitment to an autonomous way of life. The child
‘must’ become autonomous, to be sure, on the completion of his education: this follows
from the preceding argument. But whether the pupil then chooses to stay autonomous is
up to him: if he becomes a slave or a ‘true believer’, that is none of the teacher’s business,
at least on the argument so far…. Autonomy, we might say, is a ‘must’ if we are looking
at what is educationally worthwhile; what is worthwhile in itself as an ideal of life is quite
another question.59

White himself appears to have worries about this strange position, since he returns to it in
the last two pages of the book, but his view, at this point, seems clear enough.
Like autonomy and reflection, knowledge is only to be valued (eventually) if the
person wants to value it. Knowledge must be acquired in some sense, however, even if
only temporarily, in order to be as near as possible to satisfying condition (a) of the ideal
situation. Condition (a) is only satisfied if the person ‘knows of all the other things which
he might have preferred at that time’, i.e. at the time of making a choice of what he will
value. How can a pupil, in his limited period of education, be brought into knowledgeable
contact with all the activities from which he might eventually choose? If, indeed, it was
necessary to introduce pupils to all possible activities the task would be impossible. White,
however, supposes this not to be necessary because of a convenient twofold categorization
that he believes to characterize all activities. His first indication takes all activities that
need to be learned and claims that:

These can be divided, exhaustively, into two classes, in which:

(1) no understanding of what it is to want X is logically possible without engaging in X
(2) some understanding of what it is to want X is logically possible without engaging in X.60

A page later the two categories have changed slightly in that ‘understanding of what it is to
want X’ becomes ‘understanding of X’ as follows:

Category I: No understanding of X is logically possible without engaging in X….

Category II: Some understanding of X is logically possible without engaging in X.61

Criteria for what is to count as ‘some understanding of X’ are offered, namely, ‘either a
correct verbal account, sufficient to distinguish X from other things, or correct identification
 Three accounts consideredâ•… 73
of cases of X’. The paradigm case of an activity in Category I is given as linguistic
communication; and of Category II, climbing mountains. The logical point is then easily
made since with no engagement at all in linguistic communication how could anyone
entertain any idea about it at all, let alone judge whether one wanted to value it? Climbing
mountains is clearly different, in that I could gain some idea about such an activity without
actually engaging in it.
White maintains that communication in general, mathematics, physical science,
appreciating works of art and philosophizing are important Category I activities, though
not an exhaustive list; whereas speaking a foreign language, playing organized games like
cricket, cookery and woodwork, creative activities in art and music, vocational and leisure
pursuits of innumerable kinds are all examples of Category II activities. The curriculum
implications up to this point are plain: there are good grounds for compelling pupils to
engage in Category I activities like those listed above, but there are no grounds of this kind
for compelling pupils to engage in Category II activities, at least if no other arguments
can be adduced. White notes, pertinently, that children in English schools nevertheless
are compelled to engage in Category II activities, games for example, whilst not always
being compelled to engage in all Category I activities. He deals, incisively and cogently,
I think, with a number of popular but bad arguments attempting to justify the compulsory
involvement of pupils in foreign languages and organized games.62 The issue of justification
is important throughout for White, it being just as wrong not to compel where there is
justification as it is to compel where there is not. It is perhaps necessary to point out again
that the justification here is all in the service of the ultimate liberty of the pupil.

One comes back to the principle of liberty and the justified overridings of it. If children
were left free not to speak, study mathematics, physics, philosophy or contemplate works
of art, then this might well harm them, since they might never come to know of whole areas
of possible wants, both those connected with the pursuit of these activities for their own
sake and those dependent on an understanding of these activities for their intelligibility.
It might not only harm the child to be cut off from all these possible options: it might
also…harm men in general if others were incapable of grasping what they wanted to do.
The principle of liberty may be overridden, therefore, to prevent harm both to the pupils
themselves and to men in general.63

The account of the curriculum so far, it could be argued, is rather limited, though it contains
that part of White’s proposals most frequently referred to, and also, on my view, that part
of his account which is most closely argued. The remainder of the book is much looser in
style and rather more tentative. There are, however, three important elements still to be
included in White’s curriculum: studies aimed at giving the pupil a view of diverse ways of
life; studies aimed at practical decision-making; and studies helping the development of a
moral and personally integrated life-style.
It follows from White’s subjective views about values that he sees life-styles or ways
of life as open to individual choice. So that children may come to have a free choice as
to their life-styles two things are necessary: firstly, they must be introduced to as wide a
range of life-styles as possible and, secondly, school teachers must not foreclose with their
power and influence on the possibilities opened to their pupils. The main subject agencies
74â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
for effecting the introduction are history including biography, literature including foreign
literature in translation, the study of religion and philosophy, especially ethics.
White does not only want the pupil to know about different ways of life in some general
and detached manner, but to see this as an issue significant for himself. The pupil has to
shape a coherent life-style for himself. White sees this as a blend of two ideas. The first is
that all individual things learned have to be seen in what R.S.Peters has called a cognitive
perspective, that is, with some relationship to one another and in the light of one another,
rather than in isolation and having nothing to do with each other. The second is that all
learning must relate to a ‘coherent pattern of life’ for the individual. White is at pains
to point out that the integration he is looking for here is not just a linking of everything
together in the way sometimes favoured in the sillier versions of integrated studies, but
something on the one hand more personal and on the other more social, moral and political.
The pupil, he is saying, has to come to have some coherent and integrated conception of his
own life stance, but he also has to include in his coherent view the idea that there are others
to be considered too—his coherent style, ideally, is to become universalistic.
White, like many other writers on the curriculum, believes that pupils should be
involved in practical matters, but he does not mean by this the sometimes isolated skills in
woodwork, metalwork and the like that are often meant. Rather he means skills:

which help one to understand means to ends, obstacles and ways round them. They will not
necessarily require physical skill: some understanding of economic affairs, for instance,
would seem an obvious candidate for this part of the curriculum.64

He also believes that in some way these practical studies must be integrated with the
understanding of ends hopefully produced by the studies mentioned already.
White is tantalizingly sketchy as to the curriculum implications of all this. The sketch
seems to indicate a kind of relatively sophisticated introduction to social, political and
economic affairs:

At any rate there is clearly a need at this point to work out the contours of a basic minimum
in this curriculum area other than the ones already described. It will perhaps be drawn
partly from sociology, economics, economic geography and political science; and also
partly from moral and social philosophy.65

It is emphasized that the approach to all of this should be a critical one, not leaving students
with the impression that all can only be done, ends only achieved, within the given system.
Like many other writers on curriculum matters White appears to take it for granted that all
pupils should have some kind of careers education, and he asserts that this should be part
of the basic minimum—‘an integrated part of the school’s educational activity’.
Lastly, White notes that the ends a pupil might go on to choose are not only affected
by social, political and economic factors, but by psychological factors as well. The main
concern here seems to be to acquaint pupils in some way, not necessarily by a course
in psychology, with the various kinds of psychological impediment hindering people’s
rational decision-making and determination of ends.
 Three accounts consideredâ•… 75
It is now necessary to comment critically on these ideas. In doing so I shall make some
reference to White’s later (1982) work where this seems relevant to the points of criticism
I want to raise.
There are many aspects of White’s work with which I find it easy to sympathize. The
emphasis upon the need for justification echoes my own concerns. What is to be compulsory
needs justifying, repeatedly affirms White, and where there is no justifiable basis for
compulsion then the activity must be voluntary for pupils in a strong sense. That is, pupils
must be free to not do it at all. There is a weak sense of ‘voluntary’ where a number
of ‘voluntary’ subjects are offered and pupils must select one. There is little justification
for this unless the alternatives are all types or variations of some general activity held to
be justifiably compulsory. Where the alternatives are simply diverse voluntary activities,
then in the strong sense of ‘voluntary’ pupils must be free to do nothing at all if they so
wish. White’s emphasis of the logic of this important difference between what is justifiably
compulsory and what is not must surely be endorsed. It will appear radical to most schools
where little is really voluntary in quite this sense.
White’s fine sense of the place of the individual in the physical, political, social and
economic world, though not the most systematically worked out part of his account, is also
worthy of support. There is a richness of perception here compared with which some other
accounts, and many actual practices look distinctly crude. Similarly, White’s continual
emphasis on what is necessary for rational autonomy should be noted. Pupils are to be
helped to develop a coherent system of ends for themselves and to come to realize all that is
involved, not only in the individual cpmpetence to achieve the ends, but the problems and
responsibilities of achieving them within a moral and democratic system of other similarly
autonomous choosers. All this is difficult to explain and systematize, and White’s book is
too short to give all this the argued basis that he gives only to the first part of his case. Much
of it seems sketchy if sensitively illuminating.
I place last as an area of agreement that which in most discussions of White comes
first. This is his claim that if we can justify a basic minimum curriculum it ought to be
compulsory in the sense that all schools should be required to provide such a minimum
and oblige all their pupils to take it. How this is to be done is not the subject of a chapter of
content and substance, but the logic of the claim is surely not to be denied.
Despite these points of sympathy and agreement I cannot, however, say that White’s
account can stand as a coherent philosophy of content for a general liberal education. There
are too many difficulties by far, and these must now be considered.
The major objection is to the attachment of White’s view to a subjective theory of
value. In the first place White himself is not consistent. There is little doubt that White
does attach objective value to rationality and autonomy, otherwise why should he bother
to argue his case and why should he attach importance to justification? White, like the
present writer, clearly believes and affirms that teachers and administrators ought to justify
their actions and particularly the making of studies compulsory. To say that people ought
to value something—i.e. justification—is to say that there are good reasons for valuing
that something. And to say that there are good reasons for valuing it is to say that the
valuing is objective and not subjective. Whether a given individual actually comes to value
justification is, of course, a contingent matter; that one ought to value what there are good
reasons for valuing is, however, an objective matter when the reasons are demonstrable.
76â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
Similarly White clearly believes that people ought to value autonomy. His strange idea
that, once we have helped pupils become autonomous, it is then up to them whether they
remain so, as though abandoning autonomy is to be considered merely one exercise of
autonomy, clearly will not do. White himself appears to admit the oddity of this when, in
his later book, he changes his mind. The teacher he now says:

has good reasons to care that the person he has brought up to be autonomous stays that
way, unless he finds the burden of autonomy too great, reasons to do, as before, with
the conflict-ridden nature of human life, the need for some kind of resolution and the
misguidedness of trying to find ethical experts on whom to rely.66

This is, of course, sound argument; but it supports the idea of the objective valuing of
autonomy and therefore undermines the whole basis of White’s earlier construction.
Similar remarks can be made about White’s views on reflection and knowledge. Not
only are particular kinds of reflection and knowledge conceived of in subjective value
terms—i.e. mathematics is only valuable for Johnny if he comes to value it—but reflection
and knowledge, generally speaking, are also only to be considered subjectively valuable.
In other words, it does not particularly matter if a person comes not to value reflection
and knowledge, providing that educationally we had given him the opportunity. This
seems to me to be wrong generally and contradictory, particularly even within White’s
own framework of argument. Why should we value (and be told we ought to value) the
acquisition of certain kinds of knowledge and reflection necessary for autonomous choice
only during the period of education? Why should we not go on valuing them for similar
reasons—i.e. as continuing to be necessary for the exercise of autonomous judgment? The
idea that education provides the opportunity for choice, that the choice is then exercised
and henceforth only the knowledge chosen as valuable at that point is needed, seems to me
a monstrously odd idea. Surely the truth is that if I take my autonomy seriously there are
certain kinds of knowledge and reflection, broadly constituent of a rational understanding of
the human situation, that I must continue to exercise and expand whilst I continue to value
my autonomy. It is precisely the interrelated nature of the ideas of autonomy, rationality,
morality and knowledge that provides the objectively valuable aspect of them. It simply is
not the case that one can, without inconsistency, take or leave these essential characteristics
of personhood one at a time. If I am to make choices rather than mere reactions, I must
value reasons for choices. I must value, therefore, at least some amount of reasons and
reflection and the knowledge and understanding connected with such thought. The strong
point of Hirst’s arguments, whatever else we might have criticized, is his recognition of
these necessities.
White, again, appears to make a rather grudging acknowledgment of the necessity
of knowledge in his 1982 book. Here he admits the necessity of knowledge for moral
autonomy, but only in a kind of subsidiary way.67 That is to say, it is moral autonomy that is
really valuable but knowledge happens to be a necessity for it and has no value in its own
right. Similarly, White places knowledge in this necessary but subsidiary relationship with
certain dispositions and virtues that loom large in importance in the 1982 work. In Chapter
6 of this work, in which the Educated Man is characterized, White argues for the centrality
of certain dispositions and virtues as educational aims. ‘Knowledge is necessary to virtue,’
 Three accounts consideredâ•… 77
he affirms, ‘but knowledgeableness is not a self-justifying state on its own.’68 The virtues
and dispositions include:
caring about one’s own well-being
being morally virtuous
being prudent, courageous, temperate, benevolent, just, truthful, tolerant and reliable, lucid,
wise, autonomous, detached, imaginative
being independent-minded oneself and sympathetic to independent-mindedness in others
being humorous, vital
having a chosen life plan.
In order, as it were, to service and support these desirable (and presumably justifiable)
dispositions, the educated man must have knowledge of:
the variety of ends in themselves
something of the means for obtaining and adopting them, and such knowledge is only to be
valued because of such service to the dispositions and virtues.
The major fault here, and it is to my mind a great one, is to suppose for one moment
that there can be this kind of separation between the virtues and dispositions on the one
hand and knowledge and understanding on the other. The virtues and dispositions favoured
by White are not just dependent upon knowledge in some trivial way, they are totally
inconceivable without knowledge and understanding. No non-knowing creature could pos-
sibly be characterized as prudent, courageous or tolerant, since all these virtues positively
embody both a knowledge of what one is doing and why one is doing it. Non-human ani-
mals cannot be humorous for precisely the same reason—only knowers can be humorous.
Independent-mindedness not only needs knowledge and understanding for what one is
being independently minded about, but the very act of being independent is an affirmation
of a certain kind of known conception of oneself: one acts out of this conception of oneself
as autonomous. It is not just that autonomy is the name of a certain class of performance or
behaviour, it is rather, as Julius Kovesi has pointed out about moral concepts,69 that autono-
mous action is only made possible by the possession of the concept. In other words I have
to know I am autonomous in order to be so. To say simply that certain kinds of knowledge
are necessary to dispositions and virtues is to understate the case in a profound way. In truth
virtues and dispositions, in the typical human case, are as much compounded of knowledge
and understanding as they are of consistencies of behaviour: indeed, we would not know
whether particular behaviours constituted virtuous behaviour unless we knew something of
the knowledge and understanding in which the behaviour was set.
Of course, the knowledge and understanding is not the whole of a virtue or a disposition,
any more than the peel or the flesh taken alone is the whole of the orange; but if that is all
White means he has unloaded a truism. Of course, also, we want people to exercise the
virtues and not just to know about them. If that is what White means, I agree with him;
but there is no need to demean knowledge and understanding in the process. Indeed, the
greater danger is that teachers will take short cuts to establish certain kinds of behaviour
seen by them to be prudent, virtuous, etc., without rooting the behaviour in the framework
of knowledge and understanding necessary for the behaviour to be really autonomous. In
brief, but most profoundly, the child must come to know what he is doing and to know why
78â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
he is doing it. All else is manipulation and a deep lack of respect for the child. White, I am
sure, would not want this, but his denigration of the place of knowledge and understanding
in his scheme of things is more than likely to lead in that direction.
As with Hirst and Phenix, then, one is left praising certain insights and illuminations
but unsatisfied with the total structure. In the case of White the confusion starts, I believe,
with his apparent rejection of objective values, but is compounded by the difficulty of
giving any coherence to parts of the thesis unless certain objective values are presupposed;
in particular, rationality, autonomy, respect for persons and knowledge and understanding.
The constant attempt by White to reject these as essentially valuable, whilst frequently
dragging them back in as necessary instruments destroys any fundamental coherence in
his theories.
Any satisfying account of a necessary content for a liberal and general education must
affirm these values as objective and build upon them. The next chapter attempts to do this.
 7
The content of a liberal education

Introduction
In discussing the characteristics of a general liberal education, in attempting to justify such
an education, in outlining some preliminary ideas about content, and in criticizing the ideas
of Hirst, Phenix and White a number of guiding principles for the content and methods
appropriate to liberal education have been argued for. I list them here as a convenient
summary, together with indications of where the detailed discussions have arisen.
The contents and methods of a liberal general education must be such as to be:
1 liberating from the restrictions of the present and the particular; (3.3.1)
2 concerned with knowledge and understanding that is fundamental and general; (3.3.2)
(5)
3 concerned with intrinsically valued ends; (3.3.3)
4 concerned with the development of reason; (3.3.4)
5 of the most general (rather than specific) utility, (4.3)
6 concerned with justifiable belief and action; (4.4)
7 respectful of the pupil as person or potential person; (4.5)
8 concerned with the actions, makings, doings, dispositions, expressions and interactions
which give meaning, point and significance to propositions, and not only with the truth
and falsity of propositions; (6.1)
9 concerned with a ‘rich’ sense of ‘meaning’ rather than a solely propositional sense;
(6.1) (6.2)
10 concerned with what is objectively valuable, that is, what is justifiably to be valued.
(6.3)
It is not, of course, claimed that these conditions are logically exclusive. In fact they
overlap and interlink considerably. Neither is it claimed that every item of content and
every suggested piece of method must satisfy each and every one of these conditions. The
point of guiding principles is much more flexible than that, and the relationship between
principles and subsumed items much looser. Nevertheless the principles are principles and
have been argued for. If the theory being expounded here is to be at all coherent then the
principles listed here should not only be individually justifiable but should not, at least,
contradict one another. Similarly, an item of content or method might not necessarily have
to do with all the conditions but it must not contradict any one of them. There must be a
coherent structure in at least this sense. If the structure coheres more closely and tightly, in
terms of mutually supporting and mutually implying or presupposing ideas, as I believe it
does, then so much the better.
What kind of content structure can be built on these principles and these terms?
80â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
7.1 Underlying ideas and assumptions
I believe, like Hirst, that we must look for logical distinctions in human forms of inquiry;
but unlike Hirst I believe the number of logically distinct forms to be quite small and
nothing like in number the seven or eight that Hirst suggests. Since this chapter is to be a
positive account I shall not go over again the difficulties that Hirst runs into in claiming to
discern the number of forms he picks out.
Distinctions in the curriculum are not only to be made on logical grounds, though we
should start from there. It is perfectly proper to make judgments about content on the
purely empirical or pragmatic claim of something having been considered important,
significant, to large numbers of intelligent human beings. We might thus have a hierarchy
of distinctions to be made, where the most fundamental distinctions are logically distinct
forms of inquiry, confused only at the cost of the gravest category mistakes and consequent
misunderstanding, and where subsequent sub-divisions are less purely logical and more
to do with discerned foci of human import. There might also be a case for yet further sub-
divisions based on individual interest once we are reasonably sure that the major divisions
are being attended to. It will also be necessary to inject into this framework what I shall
call ‘the serving competencies’, by which title I mean to name those skills, understandings,
practices, facilities and dispositions without which no desire to understand, to inquire, can
be kindled, maintained, developed and serviced.
The whole of this framework, yet to be fleshed out, must serve an integrative idea—
namely that of a developing person, born into a world of persons inhabiting a physical
world understood to some extent and manipulated to some extent by persons, and seeking
to understand and operate in such a personal, social and physical world.
I must now try to construct this framework of content for a liberal and general education
by discussing in turn:
7.2 the integrative idea,
7.3 the fundamental logical division,
7.4 the serving competencies,
7.5 the convenient and pragmatic divisions, and
7.6 the place of interest.

7.2 The integrative idea

All educational ideals reflect a world view and fail to satisfy if the world view they reflect
is too idiosyncratic or held by too few people. The world view reflected here is basically
humanistic in the broadest sense of that word. The vision is that all human beings are born
into—as it were—a kind of double world: a world of persons and a world of physical
material and structures. To suggest such a duality is not to prejudge arguments about the
material or otherwise nature of persons. The duality rests upon the apparent fact that only
some ‘parts’ of the universe are capable of trying to understand their situation, and these
‘parts’ are persons. Persons have to come to know enough about the physical world they
find themselves in to be able to operate in it—that is, to shape purposes for themselves
and to seek to satisfy those purposes. This is no easy task, but it is further complicated by
being born into a world that is also, very significantly, a world of other persons who have
 The content of a liberal educationâ•… 81
collectively inherited, and continue to gain and share knowledge and understanding of their
world. The child, as part of grasping what he is meshed in with, has to come to see what it is
to be a person with other persons. He or she has not only to understand the world, but also
to understand what it is to be one who tries to understand the world among others similarly
engaged and frustrated.1 Education, in its liberating sense, is appropriate for persons because
only persons act out of their own understandings of situations they find themselves in.
They do not simply react or live out built-in instincts or behaviour patterns. Persons enter
into a world already perceived through the understandings, meanings and practices shaped
and modified by countless generations of persons before them, and these understandings
have themselves to be understood by young persons, not merely received as passed on to
them. This is the vision, and to manage this with integrity is the task of liberal education.
To be subject, through education, to this integrative idea, and indeed to come to see
the world ultimately and personally with this integrative idea in mind, the pupil does not
necessarily have to have been subject to what are sometimes called integrated studies. The
integrative idea here is nothing to do with joining subjects together for whatever likely
or unlikely reason, but it is much to do with the idea of coherence, both in a programme
of education and in a person’s own conception and understanding of his or her situation.
One can, without inconsistency, maintain clear conceptual distinctions between forms of
inquiry, subjects or parts of subjects, whilst still carrying all these distinctions in one’s
mind in some kind of coherent framework. Indeed, how could one have coherence without
making and maintaining justifiable distinctions of a logical and conceptual kind? Attempts
to erect structures or frameworks without attending to necessary distinctions, or even
distinctions of convenience result only in confusing muddles.

7.3 The fundamental logical division

Whatever sub-divisions it might subsequently be necessary or desirable to make there are
only two basic kinds of inquiry, two basic kinds of ‘goings on’ that we can try to understand
in making sense of our situation. Michael Oakeshott puts it this way:

There are two categories of identities to be reckoned with, predicating categorially different
‘orders’ of inquiry. To the first belong ‘goings-on’ the identification of which includes the
recognition that they are themselves exhibitions of intelligence: for example, a ‘going-on’
identified as itself an engagement to understand (a biologist at work,…an audience at a
play, a boy learning Latin), a ‘going on’ identified as a human action (that is, an agent
responding to an understood situation meaning to achieve an imagined and wished-for
outcome), a subscription to a ‘practice’ which requires to be understood in order to be
participated in, a work of art, an artefact, an argument, a barrister addressing a court of law,
an expression of moral sentiment, a statement of belief or of policy, etc….
To the second category belong ‘goings-on’ recognized, in virtue of their characteristics,
not themselves to be exhibitions of intelligence: for example, a rock formation, a wave
breaking on the shore, metal fatigue, a thunderstorm, a butterfly on the wing, the facial
resemblances of children and parents, a chameleon changing colour, melting ice, etc.2

Within each of these categorially distinct orders of inquiry Oakeshott also posits sub-
divisions which he considers idiomatically but not categorially different. For example,
82â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
marks on a piece of paper might be recognized categorially as manifestations of intelligence
but remain ambiguous until we can decide whether the marks constitute art, symbol (a
trademark or emblem), or a sign. Each particular idiom in both orders of inquiry will
have methods and theories constituting its particularity. For example we have ethics,
jurisprudence and aesthetics, all being inquiries into manifestations of human intelligence.
Similarly physics, chemistry, biology and psychology are distinguishable idioms, all being
inquiries into ‘goings-on’ not themselves exhibitions of intelligence. These idioms are not
exclusively separable because the distinctions are not categorial. For example, chemistry
might be reducible to physics and psychology to biology; nevertheless there are well
established differences in terms of conceptual usage, theories and methodologies.
One more Oakeshottian idea helps us to link the fundamental logical division of two
categorially different orders of inquiry to the more idiomatic and pragmatic or convenient
distinctions actually to be found in human life—this is the idea of a practice. The idea of a
practice, as used by Oakeshott, is an extraordinarily rich and illuminating idea, especially
significant in our context since education can be viewed both as itself a practice and also
the means of initiating pupils into the practices of interrelating human agents:

what joins agents in conduct is to be recognized as a ‘practice’; that is, a procedure proper
or useful to be observed and therefore capable of being neglected or violated and capable,
also, of being observed only in the chosen subscription of agents.
A practice may be identified as a set of considerations, manners, uses, observances,
customs, standards, canons, maxims, principles, rules and offices specifying useful
procedures or denoting obligations or duties which relate to human actions and utterances.
It is a prudential or an authoritative adverbial qualification of choices and performances,
more or less complicated, in which conduct is understood in terms of a procedure.3

A practice may be relatively simple or relatively complicated. Three great human practices
specifically mentioned by Oakeshott are language, morality and education:

like every other transaction inter homines, this engagement to educate is itself utterances,
actions and responses governed by a practice in which a relationship, distinguished from
all others, is articulated: the relationship of teachers and learners.4

Typically, human agents are rarely involved in mere performances, their actions rather
being governed by an understanding of an appropriate practice which can only be gained
by learning. The kind of task often referred to as ‘practical’, says Oakeshott, is not a
mere performance but rather ‘conduct in respect of its acknowledgement of a practice’.
What persons engage in within such practices are not to be seen as processes, since this
is the appropriate term for ‘goings-on’ not manifestations of intelligence, but rather as
subscription to procedures evolved by previous generations and subject to change and
fluctuation in method and perceived utility.

Indeed, agents as historic persons composed of acquired beliefs, understandings, sentiments,

imaginings, aptitudes, arts, skills, etc., and capable of self-disclosure in actions, themselves
emerge in a transaction between the generations called education, in which newcomers to
 The content of a liberal educationâ•… 83
a local human scene are initiated into its ‘mysteries’; that is, into practices which human
beings have invented for themselves.5

Here, then, is a rich conceptual view of the human situation against which to plot the
content of a liberal education; far richer than the propositional distinctions of the Hirstian
view criticized earlier. We start with a truly logical and categorial distinction of fundamental
importance whereby the two great orders of inquiry are distinguished. These two great
and fundamental orders of inquiry can then be sub-divided, but on a different basis, into
particular idioms of inquiry which are themselves the practices of human agents. These
particular idioms of inquiry, these practices, can be judged objectively but pragmatically in
terms of the importance and significance they have had for generations of human beings,
and for the significance of the meanings and understandings handed on to fresh generations
to re-assess and modify. Other practices, rooted in the results of various attempts to
understand, are not themselves purely attempts to understand but rather are the makings
and creations of human agents individually and collectively. Art and technology, for
example, undeniably practices and rooted in understandings, are not themselves attempts
to understand but rather attempts to create, to make, and to solve instrumental problems.
The essential starting point, then, in constructing the content of a liberal education, is
that some studies will be initiating pupils into inquiries and practices only understandable
as manifestations of intelligence, and other studies will be initiating pupils into inquiries
whose objects are only understandable as not being manifestations of intelligence. To start
to perceive this is the first step to intellectual liberation. I shall expand on this, and examine
the relationship of this major division to the lesser divisions subsumed under it, when I
have introduced the idea of the serving competencies.

7.4 The serving competencies

A liberal education, I have said, is concerned with knowledge, understandings, makings
and doings valuable in themselves. Nevertheless, much of what is learned in such an
education must of necessity be instrumental, not in the sense of serving specifically
prescribed purposes beyond a liberal education, but rather in the sense of making the more
substantive objectives of such an education attainable. This is especially the case in the
early stages of a liberal education, when young pupils must learn how to learn by acquiring
the appropriate means, skills and dispositions. Much of primary education will be taken up
with the mastery of these serving competencies which make the rest of a liberal education
possible and much else besides.
About most of these serving competencies there is little dispute that I am aware of. The
first necessity, of extreme and undeniable importance, is that the child acquires competency
in at least one operating language to as high and broad a level as possible. The child must
come to be able to talk with ease, fluency and confidence; he must become an attentive
and discriminating listener; he must attain considerable skills of reading and abilities in
writing language himself. All this can be said in a few words but constitutes, as all teachers
of young children know, a very large, complex and challenging educational task. Here we
are dealing not only with the important tools of communication but with the very stuff of
discursive reasoning itself. It is not necessary to enter the debate about the necessity or
otherwise of language to rational and logical thought in order to accept that for most people
84â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
there is little reasoning that is not supported, facilitated or even made possible by language.
Here is the first great practice of human agents into which children must be initiated.
It is also generally argued that alongside literacy must go numeracy. Little further
study can progress unless at least some elementary grasp of numbers, order, quantitative
comparison, simple measurement, parts and divisions, and so on, is attained. Such elementary
competency, of course, as well as being of general service—and thus counting as a serving
competency—lays the foundation for entering into mathematics as a study, worthwhile
in its own right, of one way of making sense of experience. As a serving competency,
however, we are concerned with simple numeracy, relating very much to language (i.e. the
special language of cardinal and ordinal numbering, parts, multiples, and so on) on the one
hand, and to logical reasoning on the other.
Indeed, logical reasoning itself is another great serving competency which has received
nothing like the attention that has been given to literacy and numeracy. In order to enter the
substantive areas of inquiry pupils need to come to operate logically: to be able to infer, to
avoid contradiction, to hypothesize, to discern what is logically possible and what is not.
To progress here is no easier than learning to read, write and compute; but in essence it is
no more difficult, at least in its more elementary moves, either. Piaget6 and his followers
have charged some of the developmental paths here and de Bono7 has indicated some
possible ways of developing critical thinking quite deliberately. Bruner and his followers8
and associates have attached more importance, rightly I believe, to the development of
critical thinking by means of interrelated inquiries making use of the established intellectual
devices of the existing disciplines. However it is done, little will be done successfully
in any area of inquiry unless logical thought is encouraged and developed as a serving
competency. One way of developing language, of course, is by developing the logical use
of language. When the specific teaching of grammar and other rules of language became
unfashionable, largely because of some deplorable and meaninglessly rote methods of
teaching such rules, the teaching of the precise and logical use of language often fell by the
wayside also. This is a pity, since the use of language with semantic precision and logical
accuracy is perhaps the greatest mental liberator of all skills.
To study well pupils must be reasonably fit and healthy. This, of course, cannot be solely
the responsibility of schools, but schools must play a part. Physical education enthusiasts
have tried to establish much more honorific justifications for the place of physical education
in recent years, but as a serving competency physical fitness is a perfectly justifiable objective
which needs no embroidery. Neither does it need, necessarily, costly equipment nor all the
trappings of competitiveness with which physical education has become associated. These
may have another place in the curriculum, but as a serving competency all that is needed
is a reasonable balance of physical activity, recreation and outdoor activity, with some
planned and systematic exercise.
Some of the serving competencies, as with some of the substantive items of content still
to be discussed, are dispositions rather than skills or items of knowledge and understanding.
This is not to assume, as White seems to have done, that there is some clear difference
between dispositions on the one hand and knowledge, understanding and skills on the
other. Each depends upon the others. Nevertheless there is an affective characteristic
of dispositions that makes them separately worthy of notice. To be disposed to attend,
concentrate or cooperate is certainly to take the view (to believe, to know, to understand)
 The content of a liberal educationâ•… 85
that I ought to attend, concentrate or cooperate in certain circumstances; but it is also more
than this because it is to be affectively moved actually to attend, concentrate or cooperate,
or at least to feel guilt if I do not.
To be disposed to do something clearly differs from being compelled to do something.
Although a teacher can compel certain behaviour likely to facilitate the exercise of
dispositions, the self-directing nature of dispositions can sometimes be very difficult to
get at. Children still fail to cooperate, attend, concentrate and persevere, say, even when
the teacher has pressed in the strongest way and threatened the direst sanctions. Yet other
children, in the complete absence of such force or threat of force, sometimes exercise all
these dispositions quite freely.
There is a kind of double necessity about the dispositions which are to be seen as serving
competencies of a liberal education: they must be acquired and developed, and they must
be brought to bear in appropriate circumstances. The reason for failure in the second of
these is sometimes, though not always, simply a consequence of failure in the first. A
young child cannot exercise cooperation, say, in an appropriate circumstance, if he does
not know what it is to cooperate. A disposition to do something can be withheld even after
being acquired, but it clearly cannot be exercised if it has never been acquired in the first
place. The acquisition, development and appropriate exercise of dispositions is not the
most thoroughly studied branch of educational psychology by any means. I shall need to
say more about this in the next chapter. For the present I list some of the main dispositions
that will best serve in liberal education:
the disposition to
(i) attend to something or somebody,
(ii) concentrate on something,
(iii) cooperate with others,
(iv) organize time, materials, thought and actions,
(v) reason,
(vi) imagine possibilities, and to
(vii) inquire—try to understand.
Much of this is to do with the overcoming of whim and impulse in the interest of sustained,
rational and purposive action. Such dispositions develop slowly, perhaps, but there is
little doubt that once developed and exercised they serve further endeavours in liberal
education.
Lastly one must note that as technologies change, especially those of communication and
information processing, so some of the important serving competencies will change. Reading
and writing stood for centuries as the main agents of communication and information-
handling, if under ‘writing’ we include printing. Radio and television in themselves seemed
hardly to threaten this dominance, at least in education, but the rapid development of the
micro-electronic industry seems a much more significant change. Computers, micro-
processors and electronic word-processors seem likely to mean that certain keyboard
skills and probably certain programming and operating skills will increasingly come to
be necessary serving competencies. The problem might well be one of ensuring that these
skills are kept in a serving capacity with reference to liberal education and do not come to
dominate it.
86â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
The ideas I have discussed so far, in beginning to draft the content of a liberal education,
relate together in something like Figure 7.1.
In the early stages of a liberal education the serving competencies will take up most of the
time, gradually becoming more involved with substantive inquiries, studies and activities.

Figure 7.1 First draft of the general ideas shaping the content of a liberal education

Another trend proper to a liberal education would be that both kinds of inquiries will increase
in the use of school time at first, but in the later stages the inquiries into ‘goings-on’ themselves
manifestations of intelligence will loom larger. Diagrams are speciously precise, but the
idea would be something like that shown by Figure 7.2. The increasing proportion of time
spent on matters concerned with manifestations of intelligence in the later years is intended
to reflect the idea, proper to a liberal education, that the world of persons is to be considered
more important than the world of things, however sophisticated the ‘things’ might be.
To counter a possible objection at this stage it is perhaps necessary to make a reminder
that I talk here solely of the content appropriate for a liberal and general education. Nothing
is said here of how a country might go about its specialist training. It may be, for example,
that liberal education, as here described, should stop at age 16 and other, more specialist
and vocationally oriented training and education, take over. This is the proper subject of
a later chapter. What we must do now is to put some more substantial flesh on this bare
skeleton.
 The content of a liberal educationâ•… 87

Figure 7.2 Roughly relative proportions of time on major parts of a liberal education

7.5 The convenient and pragmatic divisions

Divisions within each of the two main orders of inquiry are difficult to make on purely logical
grounds, as we saw in examining the ideas of Hirst. This does not mean, however, that any
divisions made must therefore be arbitrary. Divisions based on interest or convenience need
not be arbitrary divisions since they can indicate long-established divisions arising from
the diversified activities and practices of human-kind, whereby persons notice, attend to
and deal with certain abstracted aspects of their experience, rather than others which they
might have chosen or might choose at another time. Some of these, like certain facts of the
physical world, or certain historically dominant features of social, political and economic
life, rather force their attention upon people and assume an importance because of this.
Others, like art and literature, perhaps do not impose in quite this kind of way. In valuing
such activities, practices and understandings we must have recourse to historical and
anthropological judgments on the part they have played in the developing understanding of
their situation by human beings. Let me try to make this clear with one example. Religion is
undeniably a convenient name for a number of diverse practices of human beings in which
rituals, actions, behaviours and beliefs are set within certain kinds of understandings of how
things are. The importance of this body of practices for a liberal education does not lie in
judgments about the truth and falsity of supposed bodies of propositions constituting these
understandings. It lies rather in judgments about the significance of these understandings
in human history and development. Since the significance is certainly great then attempts
88â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
to understand religious understandings should form part of a liberal education. This claim
could be supported even by a liberal educator, himself a secular humanist, believing most
allegedly true religious propositions to be false.
Let us start, then, with inquiries into ‘goings-on’ identified as themselves manifestations
of intelligence and see what sub-divisions can be made in this rich area which might help
us further to indicate the content of a liberal education.

7.5.1 Divisions within inquiries into ‘goings-on’ identified as themselves

manifestatiom of intelligence
It is convenient to make one major division. On the one hand we have attempts to understand
human understanding and action themselves in some very general way, not in the way of
either psychological inquiry or philosophical conceptual analysis, but rather in the way
of a more general inquiry into the essentially human condition. That is to say, into the
condition of being a person who tries to make sense of his situation and to act out of his
own understanding of this situation to create and achieve purposes, individually or with
others. This is perhaps the integrative idea of the humanities, whether explicitly understood
or not, and literary fiction, from the simple stories of early childhood to the great wealth
of classical and modern literature, probably provides the major entry into these inquiries.
To these must now be added the more recent facilities for imaginative fictions on film,
radio and television. What all these creative forms can do is to open minds to the countless
imaginary possibilities of human agency set against different visions or understandings
of the human situation. A work of fiction, itself imaginary, can widen my awareness of
the human condition even when I can only test this knowledge indirectly against my
direct experience. Sometimes, of course, such a reading enables me to see my erstwhile
experiences differently, recast them, as it were. However it works there is little doubt that
modern men and women are shaped in their understandings of how things are by the verbal
and visual imaginative creations they engage with as well as by their more immediate, but
usually less wide, direct experiences. It is also reasonable to suppose that imagination,
sensitivity of interpersonal perception and relationships, and tolerance of variety can all
be developed by broad involvement in works of creative imagination and, in turn, move
pupils away from the worst forms of ethnocentricity and egocentricity so characteristic of
over-concern with the present and the particular.
All pupils in British schools are involved with literature in some way and for some length
of time, but one might voice two criticisms. Firstly, at just the age when literature becomes
most influential, say from 14 years onwards, our examination system both cuts some pupils
off from much study of literature (those who do not choose it as an examination subject)
and, secondly, for those who do so choose it the subject becomes more like a specialist
study of literature per se, and less of a contribution to the general understanding of the
human condition.
Other subjects, too, contribute to this basic inquiry. History, rightly, has always been at
the heart of the humanities. It holds this place most properly when the study is essentially
one of interrelating and decision-making persons changing and developing their vision of
how to live together. There are ways, still called ‘history’, of diverging from this. Certain
ways of writing and teaching about economic and technological history depersonalize the
 The content of a liberal educationâ•… 89
study. This has little to do with the focus of the study but more to do with the mode of
treatment. A life of Brunel or Trevithick can have as much ‘humanities’ content as one
of Wordsworth or Milton; whereas over-emphasis on the growth of capital investment in
the railways, the growth of the steel industry or the changing constitutions of political
parties—anything quantified or abstracted into group movements—is less likely to have
such content, though it might serve other purposes.
To these traditional and basic approaches to the understanding of human understanding
and action in its most general sense we can add certain aspects of religious education. To gain
some sense of man’s quest for religious understanding is to gain an understanding of man’s
attempt to understand himself. To this will be linked another great practice of humankind,
that of morality. Any proper moral education that goes beyond mere moral instruction
will involve attempts to understand persons in relation to the moral judgments they make.
This great corpus of study, almost infinitely expandable, a lifetime’s liberal education in
itself, should be the main focus of a liberal education in schools of general education. The
aim here is not simply to try to understand a number of human practices, though that must
come; it is rather to try to understand human understanding and action itself in the most
general way. The generality here is not something that can be abstracted, since it is itself a
sum of interrelated particularities. There is no simple ‘human nature’ to be grasped because
there is no such abstractable notion. There is, instead, an imaginable variety of human
possibility, some of it already to be discerned in the stored imaginings in books, libraries,
films and tapes, and much of it yet to be imagined. There is, instead, a sensitive awareness
of the humanly proper and the improper, the decent and the indecent, the good and the bad
that have flowered from the judgmental proclivities of human persons.
All this, then, is on one side of a division that can be made in all the inquiries into
‘goings-on’ identified as themselves manifestations of intelligence. On the other side of this
divide are the various practices, of greater or lesser importance, that mankind has evolved.
This is the great list of the makings and doings of man from which only a selection can be
made for inclusion in a liberal education. To repeat, the selection cannot be made on purely
logical grounds. Each and every one of these practices can only properly be understood as
a manifestation of intelligence and the understandings and skills to be acquired are to do
with procedures and not performances or processes. In this respect they are logically much
more alike than different. To understand politics, art, economics and dance is different from
understanding the dispersal of seeds, gravitation, genetic inheritance or the expansion of
metals. What distinguishes attempts to understand politics, art, economics, and dance is
not essentially a logical distinction, it is rather the particular focus of interest and attention
of each of these activities and understandings—‘a set of considerations, manners, uses,
observances, customs, standards, canons, maxims, principles, rules and offices specifying
useful procedures or denoting obligations or duties which relate to human actions and
utterances’.9 It can certainly be said that understanding what it is to be a person at all in a
world of persons, all that I have so far indicated as properly forming the humanities, is a
necessary accompaniment (though not logically prior) to an understanding of any of the
practices, and therefore must be a part of a liberal education in some way. But the practices
themselves do not have this kind of necessity. The more practices one comes to understand
the better educated one is, no doubt, but in the time available for a general liberal education
in a period of compulsory schooling one can only come to have some understanding of those
90â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
practices judged to be the most important. Some judgment has to be made on grounds of
importance and significance. Neither can these practices really be collected, classified, into
convenient groups. It is not the case, for example, that the visual arts, music, dance, drama
and literature are all somehow similar branches of aesthetic activity, at least not in any way
that is useful. Trying to understand or participate in the great human practice of music, for
example, has no significant transfer of understanding or skill to other practices like drama
or the visual arts. Dance may have a closer connection to music, but it is still a diversified
practice in its own right. Since practices are not to be distinguished on logical grounds they
can clearly overlap, share concepts, interconnect and have relationships in all sorts of ways.
Educationally, however, we should not make too much of these interconnections. To be
initiated into a practice will always be to be involved in the particularities of that practice
and not another. In particular some practices will have evolved organizing categories that
come near to being the distinguishing central concepts that Hirst claimed to discern, and
pupils will need to grasp these as necessities of understanding the practice.
If the selection is not to be made on logical grounds neither is it proper for a liberal
education for it to be made on grounds of individual interest or perceived significance, as
the more radical child-centred theorists would have us do.10 This is to go to the other, and
unnecessary extreme. The duty we have is to involve all pupils in attempts to understand
the most significant makings and doings of man, where ‘significant’ means something
like ‘of universal significance’ or at least ‘significant over long periods of time to large
numbers of people’. To fail to attempt the involvement of a pupil in one of these major
practices purely on the grounds that he or she manifests no present interest in it is to betray
the pupil in the long run. Most teachers have long understood this, though their judgments
of importance have not always been clearly justifiable.
There is one other important consideration to note before attempting a list of such
important practices that should be part of a liberal education. That is to raise the question of
where to draw the line between those practices that should be compulsory studies and those
that pupils should be free to choose or not. Again it does not seem to be the case that this
decision can be based on simple logical grounds. The judgment of what is to be a compulsory
part of the curriculum, in a compulsory system of liberal education, can only be on grounds
of perceived human significance of a general kind. Other writers appear to recognize that
their purely logical constructions cannot contain this requirement. Hirst, for example,
acknowledges that there are some things like physical and moral education which all pupils
should have, even though they are not distinguishable as forms of knowledge. Phenix’s
test of ‘meaningfulness’, as I have argued earlier, is not a test of logical distinctiveness
but one of significance or importance. White’s attempt to distinguish logically between
Category I and Category II activities has been seen to lose its point when other activities
have to be added, even though not satisfying the justifying criterion. In short, even writers
trying to decide the compulsory/voluntary issue on logical grounds have to fall back on to
judgments of what is generally significant or important.
Such judgments are not arbitrary. They are not judgments of purely personal interest
and they are not judgments as to numerical popularity. Rather they are judgments as to the
enduring significance of certain activities and inquiries for human beings. There is little
doubt, too, that such judgments are at least partly moral judgments. That is to say that
something judged as an important human activity, and worthy of compulsory inclusion
 The content of a liberal educationâ•… 91
in a programme of liberal education, is also being judged as in some sense morally
commendable. The sense of ‘morally commendable’ here would be something like—

is likely to at least respect the pupil as a rationally autonomous person, or potentially so,
and enhance his or her development as such, and at best is likely to enhance his or her
developing awareness of others as moral agents worthy of treatment as such.

The force of such a moral component in the judgment would be mainly the negative one
of ruling out certain activities as unworthy of study in any directly participatory way:
i.e. fighting, picking pockets, torturing and swindling—all of which have been significant
human activities in the purely statistical sense of ‘significant’.
Judging human practices on this basis will produce no absolutely clear-cut division
between those inquiries that should be compulsory and those that should not. There will be
a continuum from the highly desirable to the less desirable. It must be remembered that the
areas of the serving competencies and the humanities properly so called, which we have
already considered, would be deemed so highly desirable, and so necessary to any further
inquiries and understandings, as to be compulsory.
After this lengthy preliminary on the nature of the judgments being made it is now
possible to attempt a list of those practices, the makings and doings of humankind, that
should be included in a liberal and general education. I shall give the list first, then make
brief comments on each area of inquiry. All pupils should have some introduction, including
direct involvement in the activity where that is appropriate, to the following activities of
humankind or manifestations of human intelligence:
Social and political institutions
Economic, commercial and industrial institutions
Mathematical and logical systems
Religion and morality
Art, craft and design
Literature and drama
Music and dance
Games and physical activities
A few general points may be made about this list. The order is intended to reflect, at least
roughly, degrees of importance and thus desirability, as judged on the criteria already
referred to above. All or most of these inquiries will have a historical component, but
serving a different purpose to that of history in the humanities properly speaking, namely
that of giving a developmental perspective to the study of the particular practice—e.g. art
history, political history, economic history, history of craft and technology. Each one should
be studied as a general introduction to the practice, not as the beginning of professional
training in the practice. It is impossible to deal with any of these practices without the
conveying of some specific factual information, but the danger of the transitory nature
of such information has to be realized against the overall intention of generating general
understandings of these practices. Active participation, though necessary, also has its
dangers. For example, a pupil engaged in art in a school of general and liberal education is
studying and practising with a different purpose from that of a student in an art school. In
92â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
a school of liberal education we are not trying to produce an artist, but a human being who
has some understanding of the arts as great and pervasive human practices.
The following brief notes should be read as indicating my view of what seems important
in each of these areas. Limited space precludes the fuller treatment that is really necessary—
but this would call for a monograph on each.
Social and political institutions Some consideration of how human beings have come to
organize their social and political life. Political/ geographical divisions of the world. Dif-
ferent types of government organization and beliefs underlying them. Political parties.
Sources of conflict. Central and local government. Electoral and representational meth-
ods. Other social institutions: the family and the community. Health and welfare services.
Political and social concepts—e.g. justice, freedom, equality, fraternity.
Economic, industrial and commercial institutions Some considerations of processes of
manufacture, production and exchange of goods in trade. The role of money and a simple
introduction to financial institutions. market economies and planned economies and their
relation to political beliefs. Technological development—its benefits and hazards. Trade
unions, international and multi-national business organization. Tax and rate systems. Gov-
ernment and economics.
Most of the matters under these first two headings are not taught systematically in many
schools at the moment, though they may be encountered in courses of modern history
and in some aspects of geography. Some students, of course, do study constitutions or
economics but these are normally optional courses selected at the expense of others. What
is suggested here is that these matters should be part of the curriculum of a liberal educa-
tion for all pupils because they involve human practices of great significance affecting all
people in a very pervasive and general way, whatever else they as individuals might choose
to do. I do not argue, as some do, that an informed democracy depends upon knowledge
and understanding in these areas, though there is some truth in this claim. The larger truth,
however, is that these are the major practices of humankind everywhere in some form or
another. The adult community therefore has a duty to initiate the young of the community
into an understanding of these practices, not just as a simple initiation or indoctrination
into the particular or favoured practices of the community, but as a wider initiation into a
framework of understood alternatives from which the particular community has presum-
ably chosen.
It might be objected that these matters are all too complex to be understood by young
people below the age of, say, 16. This is an odd argument. If these matters are indeed
complex then surely they need prolonged consideration, and one could certainly start
this consideration long before the age of 16. No person ever becomes suddenly capable
of understanding the complexities of social, political and economic life, at whatever
age; but to start some systematic reflection on these matters whilst still in the relatively
detached atmosphere of the classroom at least promises a wider enhancement of such
understanding.
Another objection is the susceptibility of these matters to indoctrination, where this is
taken to mean the teacher influencing pupils to share his or her belief on issues known to be
controversial. This danger cannot be denied but is not in itself a reason for excluding such
 The content of a liberal educationâ•… 93
content. Any danger of teacher indoctrination must be weighed against the ever-present
danger of indoctrination from other sources, especially radio, television, newspapers,
parents and friends. Looked at this way the possibility of teachers being less partial than
these other sources of information and opinion looks more promising, especially if teachers
themselves are aware of indoctrinatory dangers, as increasingly they are.11
Mathematical and logical systems An introduction to simple mathematics and measure-
ment, it will be remembered, was to be an important part of what I have called the serving
competencies, necessary for all pupils. What is now suggested goes much further than this.
Humankind has created great symbolic systems of thought which have become ways of
thought in themselves as well as having increasingly wide applications. Number systems,
orderings within space and time, algebra, probability and statistics are not discoveries of
non-intelligent realities in the world, they are creations of intelligence proposing ways of
ordering our experience and thought. They are, in this sense, as much intelligently created
‘goings-on’ as art or politics, and can be studied as such. This is their main liberal educa-
tion purpose and should not be confused with all the vocationally oriented quantitative
and logical applications to industrial and commercial training, which give the enterprise a
completely different purpose and are not properly part of a liberal education.12
Religion and morality I have already said that some study of religion is necessary to under-
stand the attempt by humans to understand themselves, as is some involvement in a consid-
eration of morality. Both religion and morality can also, however, be inquired into as great
human practices. Indeed, for most people, without religious and/or moral considerations
there would be no overriding framework of consideration from which to approach inqui-
ries into social, political or economic matters. This is further to emphasize the point that
the divisions between these practices are not logical but idiomatic, divisions of significant
focus of attention. I do not mean to suggest by linking religion and morality together that
they are necessarily linked. A person can clearly be moral (and immoral) in ways other
than religious ways, and according to principles not dictated by religion. That they can
be so separated, whilst for some people not so separated, is one of the things that pupils
must come to see. A liberal education does not set out to make pupils religious, but neither
does it set out to prevent them so becoming. It does and should set out to bring pupils to
some understanding of religion as a great influence in historical and contemporary affairs.
With morality the liberal educator is somewhat less neutral since, presumably, we do want
pupils to become moral rather than immoral as well as coming to understand the nature of
morality. This was the peculiar dichotomy in the Hirstian account, where it was supposed
that initiation into a logically distinct understanding of morality was a proper part of liberal
education, whilst the development of moral character was not such a proper part yet nev-
ertheless ought to be attempted for all pupils. What is suggested here, in contrast with the
Hirstian view, is that it is precisely through a proper understanding of morality, its point
and principles, that a pupil (ideally) would come to act morally. The development of moral
character is a proper task of liberal education provided it is undertaken in certain ways
themselves compatible with the principles of liberal education—that is, by methods which
are moral, rational and respectful of the personhood of the developing pupil.13
Art, craft and design For many men and women the greatest significance in their lives has
come from making and creating. The challenge to produce something pleasing, useful,
94â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
symbolically meaningful—or in various combinations of all three—has led to the making
of some of the most treasured possessions of humankind. At a more humble level this chal-
lenge has also led to the development of taste in everyday living concerning, for example,
domestic architecture, furniture, domestic tools and utensils, gardens and town-planning.
All forms of such making involve design and problem-solving in some kind of way, and
all involve some combination of practical skill with aesthetic and functional judgment—a
sense of what is pleasing and proper. Typical problems are those of the visual artist in creat-
ing the illusion of three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional surface, and those of the
technologist in turning ideas into the realities of feasible production.
Pupils undergoing a liberal education must be given some introduction tp these
enterprises but choices within them present some difficulties to the curriculum-planner.
The division between what is to be compulsory and what voluntary becomes a matter of
importance here. I would suggest the following principles:
(a) All pupils should have some regular involvement with art, craft and design activities
from 5 to 16.
(b) All pupils should have some real instruction in the use of drawing as a tool—i.e.
simple representative sketching and the production of simple sketch plans.
(c) All pupils should have an extensive introduction to the visual arts on a wider basis,
both making and appreciating.
(d) All pupils should have an extensive introduction to domestic design and making.
This would involve simple introductions to architecture, furniture design, fabrics and
furnishings design, utensil design and garden design. This only sounds over-ambitious
if we make the mistake of thinking that nothing of this kind can be studied unless
appropriate practical work accompanies it. There should, of course, be as much
practical engagement in making as is reasonably possible, but we should not avoid
some study of, say, architecture on the grounds that the pupils cannot build houses!
The general aim would be to bring pupils to a closer understanding and appreciation,
both aesthetic and technological, of the humanly made objects which surround them
in their daily lives and the possibilities of enriching such surroundings.
(e) There should be a wide range of voluntary art and craft activities which can additionally
be studied where pupils wish to.14
Literature and drama Created fictions, I have already said, form an important part of the
humanities properly speaking, that is, those inquiries in which we seek to understand not
just particular human practices but human understanding and agency itself. This is to use
literature, and a very important task of liberal education this is. But literature and drama
are, of course, great human practices which pupils ought to come to know about and be
involved in as practices. There are three main aspects to these studies: pupils need to study
in a systematic way selected works of literature and drama as exemplars of what is held to
be good in the practices; they need to be involved in readings and performances of dramatic
works and to see and discuss performances of such works; and they need to have some
experience in creating fictions themselves in various forms. To pick up a point well made by
John White there is every reason for selecting from works of foreign literature in translation
as well as from English literature. It is also important to develop the idea that the creation
of poetry and prose works is an ongoing human activity and not something to be studied
 The content of a liberal educationâ•… 95
solely historically. At least some contemporary writers should be studied and discussed.
Again the aim should be the general one of bringing pupils to some understanding of the
nature of literature and drama as human practices, not the production of writers or poets. It
would be the hope of liberal educators that all pupils would become readers, not of course
in the merely mechanical sense of being able to read but in the wider sense of wanting to
use reading as the main means of sharing in human understandings and imaginings, and
continuing to do this long after leaving behind the requirements of school.
Music Though there seems little doubt that a liberal education should include some intro-
duction to music on the criterion of its significance in human life, there is considerable
difficulty in determining exactly what to do when one moves on from the general assertion.
Here there is a greater tangle than usual of different emphases and different considerations
of what is more and less desirable. There are three main ways in which a person can be
involved with music:
(a) by coming to know about and understand music by hearing it (recorded and live) in a
context of explanations and information of a more or less historical and technical kind;
(b) by performing music in some way, either by singing or by performing on an instrument
of a traditional or electronic kind, either by oneself or with others;
(c) by composing (making) music, either in the traditional sense of writing for performance in
some agreed convention or by creating music in some more extempore or less formal way.
It is not the job of a general liberal education to produce executant musicians or composers,
however desirable these may be, for this is the task of specialist training. The main task of
a liberal education in respect of music is therefore that indicated by (a). This, however, is
not all that simple since some involvement in (b) and (c) is greatly facilitative of achieving
the understanding in (a). The guiding rule should be that involvement in (b) and (c), as
compulsory activities at least, should only be taken as far as is necessary to serve the
purposes and objectives of (a). The aim is the widest general understanding of music for all
pupils. It is not, essentially, the creating of specific performances or the fostering of specific
individual talent. This is not to suggest anything wrong with either of these activities, only
that they should be desirable voluntary extras and not the main contribution of music to a
liberal education.
Dance, games and physical activities other than those mentioned under the serving
competencies are good examples of what would count as borderline activities for me.
They are undeniable human practices of some significance. There should certainly be
opportunities for them in the facilities provided for schools. They fall, however, on the
voluntary side of the line for me! I cannot believe that a pupil should be compelled to play
football or hockey, or to engage in physical activities like gymnastics or dance if he or she
does not want to. In the case of competitive games, particularly, I have argued elsewhere
that there are other reasons why these should not be compulsory for any given pupil.15
There are, of course, in addition to all those now mentioned, a vast range of human
activities which are undeniably practices and undeniably of some significance. To start
to consider these, however, would be to move on to those activities only involving some
people, whereas those considered above, it is claimed, are practices in some sense affecting
all people. There is clearly room for a good deal of variety between schools as to the
96â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
voluntary activities that might be offered, based on the skills and interests of the staff and
parents. All pupils, however, in all schools, should be introduced to the major practices of
humankind outlined above.

7.5.2 Divisions within inquiries into ‘goings-on’ identified as not themselves

manifestations of intelligence
The activities of scientists are, of course, themselves manifestations of human intelligence.
If an inquiry was into the activities of scientists this would be but one more practice to be
studied additionally to those discussed in 7.5.1. The objects of scientific inquiry, however,
are not themselves practices with procedures, customs and actions to be investigated. It is
convenient to recall the examples given by Oakeshott: ‘A rock formation, a wave breaking
on the shore, metal fatigue, a thunderstorm, a butterfly on the wing, the facial resemblances
of children and parents, a chameleon changing colour, melting ice, etc.’16
There is sometimes confusion in education as to whether we are helping children to
understand what scientists do, or helping them to understand the ‘goings-on’ that scientists
try to understand. My contention is that for the purposes of a general liberal education it is
more properly the latter that should concern us. What we are at is to help pupils to come
to some understanding of the physical world they find themselves in: to understand, that
is, the properties and processes of this physical world that obtain quite independently of
the intervention of thought or intelligence. In order to do this pupils must be encouraged
to approach inquiry into the physical world in somewhat the manner of scientists, and not
simply to hear or see what scientists have done or proposed. Nevertheless the pupils are
not, in a liberal education, being trained as scientists. They are being helped to understand
the physical world which is inevitably the arena and framework of limiting conditions in
which they must seek to realize their individual and collective purposes.
Another preliminary point is that such understandings of the physical world inevitably
become involved in understandings of the human practices already considered. For
example, understandings of the properties of certain materials affect our understandings of
the practices of art, craft and design; understandings of human anatomy and physiological
functioning affect our understanding of possibilities in dance and certain aspects of music;
understandings of certain causal processes and physical properties affect our understanding
of industrial and commercial undertakings, and so on. This does not alter the point of the
logical division between the two great orders of inquiry; indeed, it emphasizes the need
to be clear about what can be altered by fluctuations in human interest, and what cannot
because it is in no way dependent upon that interest. Certain kinds of dance or drama
or literary forms might fade from fashion, but metals will expand, water will freeze and
radiation be emitted under certain conditions whether or not the interests of human beings
change over time.
There are several problems in deciding what, out of the vast and growing assemblage
of scientific knowledge, should form part of a general liberal education. Perhaps the first
point to remind ourselves of is that the education to be given does not cease to be general
and liberal now that we are talking of the sciences rather than the humanities and the
arts. Science presents a greater temptation to specific training and preparation than do the
humanities and the arts. Science courses in schools seem particularly influenced by science
 The content of a liberal educationâ•… 97
courses in universities, and these in turn appear to assume that students are being trained to
be scientists—scientific researchers, in fact. Schools of liberal education, or those teaching
in them and managing them, must resist being dragged into a training programme of a
scientific and technological nature. The pressures for schools to become so engaged will
be great and increase as the rate of technological change (and governments’ powerlessness
to control and manage such change) increases. This is undoubtedly happening in England
at the time of writing and will be further considered in Part III.
Even if these pressures and temptations are discounted for the moment, other problems
remain. The field of scientific knowledge is so vast and grows so rapidly that the problem
of selection is considerable. Some proposals for a science common core curriculum, whilst
worthy in urging that there should be such a common science experience for pupils, contain
so much material content that one cannot imagine any pupil other than one proceeding
to scientific specialism possibly attaining understanding of it all. (See for example that
proposed in Appendix 5.1 of Ingle and Jennings, 1981, note 17 below.) This overloading
danger is compounded by the history of the training of science teachers and its roots in the
separate disciplines of physics, chemistry and biology. Syllabus constructors inheriting
these traditions cannot resist laying the foundations for a ‘proper’ introduction to physics,
chemistry and biology in an additive way, even when the intention is to produce a common
core science curriculum for general education. Neither a sufficient appreciation of
significant scientific understandings nor a real appreciation of scientific skills and methods
can be gained when the list of topics is excessively long and multivarious. As is so often the
case we need guiding principles that will help with exclusion as well as with inclusion.
To some extent our guiding principles might match the earlier approach to the humanities
and the arts. There I suggested that what a person had to come to understand was being a
person in a world of persons and their practices. What is needed for the order of inquiry
now under consideration is a focus on what it is to understand oneself as a physical living
organism among other similar and different living creatures sharing a physical universe.
There are some understandings more central to these concerns than others among all the
scientific understandings that one could come to have. I once asked a Cambridge professor
of physics (Brian Pippard) what he thought was the most important aspect of science to be
studied as part of a general education, thinking that he would say ‘physics’, often considered
the school science subject of highest status. His actual reply was ‘human biology’, the topic
later placed first on the list of suggestions for a common science element by HMIs in
their 11 to 16 curriculum proposals (1977). On my suggested principle of selection what
could be more sensible? Second only to my concern to understand myself as a person
must be my concern to understand how I work as a physical organism. There is much to
be known about my own body that can start with relatively simple understandings, though,
of course, there is hardly any limit to the depth of knowledge and understanding that can
be developed. Knowledge of our bodies relates clearly to considerations of health and
medicine and particularly to food and nutrition. Food, nutrition, health and medicine have
clear relationships with ethical and social issues to be studied under earlier headings. They
also happen to be areas of understanding in which all persons have to make decisions about
their life-styles and consumption habits. This whole area of study is of clear and central
importance to all human beings and has nothing to do, at least initially, with whether the
pupil intends to be a scientist or not. Neither is this study purely a biological study, though
98â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
much of the understanding comes from biologists. The human body is as subject to physical
and chemical laws as it is to biological ones; and the human body interacts physically
with the physical world both unconsciously and through the more simple technologies.
These simple technologies are important to understand, not of course as things to be trained
for, nor out of nostalgia, but in order to grasp certain natural aspects of the relationship
between human beings and their natural environment: a relationship which modern and
more sophisticated technologies both weaken and make more difficult to understand and
to appreciate.17
To know something of our own bodies is to start to know something about our place
in a living world of plants and animals. Here again there is much that can be known at a
relatively simple level but also a vast area of more sophisticated inquiry to draw us on. What
seems to be of the greatest significance here is knowledge of animal behaviour and ecology,
rather than details of animal anatomy and physiology, though some such detail should not
necessarily be excluded. It is the grasp of some idea of an interrelated, evolved, living
whole of which we are part that needs struggling for, rather than the piling up of arbitrarily
selected facts having no apparent relationship with one another or with the life of the pupil.
It is also proper for human beings to have some introduction to, and description of,
the developed understandings of the non-living material universe in which they find
themselves. These understandings, quickly listed but including a great deal of study,
concern the science of the world in its place—astronomy and cosmology; the science of
the world as an object—physical geography and meteorology; the science of the world’s
resources of energy and usable materials; and the science of ecology and conservation.
In respect of these scientific understandings it is important for pupils to come to share
certain bodies of information together with some insight into this kind of evidence that
makes belief in such information warrantable, at least for the time being. The fact that
scientific information is continually in a state of change is no argument against trying
to equip pupils with a broad basis of understanding of the physical world, provided
always that the idea of a scientific knowledge as changing knowledge is part of the very
framework of the knowledge to be understood. A growing understanding of the objects
of scientific inquiry must go hand in hand with a growing awareness of science as a great
human practice. As previously pointed out, these understandings also relate to other human
practices like politics, industry and commerce which cannot properly be understood save
in their context within an understood physical world. These relationships, however, must
not drive educators into thinking that there are no distinctions to be made. Whether the
distinction is the main logical distinction between inquiries into ‘goings-on’ not themselves
manifestations of intelligence and ‘goings-on’ that are such manifestations, or the more
pragmatic and convenient distinctions between one human practice and another or one
focus of scientific inquiry and another, such distinctions are important. Before pupils can
understand relationships and interconnections they must understand what is to be related
to and connected with what.
An education in certain aspects of scientific understanding is not to be confused with
a technical education or an education in technology, even less with specific technical or
technological training. Liberal education is concerned essentially with understanding the
world, technology (with apologies to Marx!) is concerned with changing the world in
some practically useful way. Established technologies, as human practices, are among the
 The content of a liberal educationâ•… 99
things to be understood in a liberal education, but liberal education is not in the business
of training people to operate specific technologies. This is not to be taken as any general
derogation of technical training. All societies need to engage in technical training for all
sorts of specific purposes, and in a time of rapid technical change training might need to
be followed by re-training at more or less frequent intervals. The point being made here,
to be further developed later when considering politics and education, is that the training
of scientists and technicians or technologists is neither most desirably nor most efficiently
located in schools of general and liberal education which have their own demanding
objectives largely in terms of understanding.
The major divisions of study to form part of a liberal education, then, within that
categorial division of inquiries into ‘goings-on’ not themselves manifestations of human
intelligence, might conveniently be listed as follows:
(i) The workings of the human body.
(ii) Health and medicine.
(iii) Food and nutrition.
(iv) Animals and plants—behaviour and ecology.
(v) Simple technologies.
(vi) Astronomy and cosmology.
(vii) Physical geography and meteorology.
(viii) Resources of energy and usable materials.
(ix) Ecology and conservation.
These are, of course, very broad headings, but they are specific enough to indicate what is to
be considered important in relation to the governing principles of understanding ourselves
as physical organisms in a physical universe. Each heading subsumes considerable detail.
For example, heading (viii), Resources of energy and usable materials, in so far as it points
to some consideration of the properties of energy and material resources, would include
much that at present is to be found in physics and chemistry courses; but since the focus
would be on significance to humans there would also be exclusion of some of the items to
be found in long lists like that of Ingle and Jennings.

7.6 The place of interest

The guiding principles with which this chapter opened, themselves a summary of earlier
arguments, attached importance to the idea of respecting the freedom and autonomy of the
pupil. The whole conception of a liberal education being liberating rests on the assumption
that the child is to be helped to become autonomous, self-governing, a free chooser of what
to believe and to do.
Some educators have given exclusive importance to the idea of freedom, seeing it not
only as an object of education but as a defining characteristic of any education truly so
called. One writer, P.S.Wilson,18 has argued that no learning-teaching transaction can count
as education
Table 7.1 The content of a liberal general education—outline draft For explanations of
distinctions, the integrative idea and explanations of the headings, see text of Chapter 7.
100â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education

Forms of inquiry into ‘goings-on’ Serving Forms of inquiry into ‘goings-on’

essentially manifestations of competencies essentially not manifestations of
intelligence Language intelligence
Numeracy
Logical reasoning
The humanities proper Appropriate The workings of the
Literature dispositions human body
History Physical fitness Health and medicine
Morality Keyboard skills Food and nutrition
Religion Animals and plants—
behaviour and
ecology
The makings and practices of persons € Simple technologies
Social and political Astronomy and
institutions cosmology
Economic, industrial Physical geography and
and commercial meteorology
institutions Resources of energy
Mathematical and and usable materials
logical systems Ecology and
Religion and morality conservation
Art, craft and design
Literature and drama
Music and dance
Games and physical activities

unless the pupil is freely choosing to develop an interest he or she already has, a value
already present. Another writer, M.Bonnett,19 whilst not wanting to monopolize the concept
of education in quite this kind of way, nevertheless attaches the greatest importance to
the opportunity for a child to operate with authenticity out of the genuine concerns of
the constitutive core self, and rates this as of greater importance than the acquisition
of knowledge in the development of autonomy. Indeed, generally pervading the very
influential, if not always clearly articulated, ideas of child-centred education is the claim
that children must somehow be free in education, and not simply be in a state of tutelage or
preparation for freedom in the future.
Looked at from one point of view this cluster of ideas could make the delineation of
content appropriate for a liberal education a redundant exercise. For, it could be argued,
the choice of content should be the pupil’s own, otherwise freedom is denied and the
development of autonomy frustrated. I want to argue that this is a false characterization of
the child-centred position before going on to indicate some of the important truths that are
to be found in that position.
The falsity of the claim about choice of content lies in the assumption, often implicit
rather than explicit, of a subjective theory of values—i.e., the idea that there is nothing
to be called valuable other than that actually valued by an individual. The whole point of
the account of an appropriate content for a liberal education outlined in this chapter is the
justificatory argument that has accompanied it in terms of what is involved in understanding
one’s place in a world of persons and simultaneously a physical being in a physical world.
 The content of a liberal educationâ•… 101
If this justificatory account is sound then the objective value of the described content is
claimed. This is just another way of saying that if one does not value the understandings
listed then one ought to. One ought to value an understanding of persons; one ought to value
an understanding of significant human practices; one ought to value an understanding of
the physical world, and so on. The ‘ought’ here is a kind of moral ‘ought’, concerned in the
case of adults with duties to oneself. In the case of children, however, the duty attaches to
responsible adults on behalf of children, and the choice of content, in broad terms at least,
is not the responsibility of the child.
The truth in the child-centred claim lies in its correct characterization of real
understanding and real knowledge. Understandings are inevitably individual and knowledge
is only genuine where the individual grasps the warrant or reasons for holding beliefs to
be true beliefs. For a teacher to assume that understandings and knowledge can somehow
just be imposed on the pupil whatever the state of mind of the pupil is a misconception
that has bedevilled education since teaching began. If understandings and knowledge are
to be achieved then the way particular developments of understanding and knowledge
come about is significant. It is for this reason that the present interests and concerns of
the pupil are important, for it is on to these present interests and concerns, and onto the
conceptual frameworks in which such interests have their being, that any fresh knowledge
or understanding has to be grafted in some way. It is not true, I am claiming, that completely
fresh interests and concerns cannot be developed. If this were true then no education would
be possible. It is true, however, that any fresh interest or concern, any new development of
knowledge and understanding, can only come about by some kind of relationship with the
conceptual frameworks, the mental structures, already possessed by the pupil. This idea is
no mere truism and will need extensive development in the chapter to follow.
A further truth of the child-centred position is a point about motivation. The claim is
that a pupil will work harder, concentrate more, be more generally inclined to apply him
or herself to the task in hand, if the task is one of interest to the pupil. This has all the
appearance of some empirically confirmed discovery but is in fact largely conceptual or
definitional. What I mean by this is that what it means to be interested in something is to
want to pursue it, to spend time on it, to find out more about it, and so on. Thus to say that
I am more inclined to spend time on things that interest me is no more than to say that I
am more inclined to spend time on things I am inclined to spend time on! The real truth
lurking behind all this is the importance for educators of engendering in pupils the kind
of appropriate dispositions discussed in 7.4. It is an educational task to engender concern,
care and interest for justifiably worthwhile endeavours.
Yet a further extension of this line of thought is the claim that pupils will be more
motivated to engage fully in activities and content that are self-chosen than in those chosen
by others. This is a different point from the claim that pupils need to exercise choice in
order to develop their autonomy, and it is certainly not merely a conceptual or definitional
point. Observation, however, does not lead me to believe that the truth of this claim is at
all obvious. For one thing children often choose one activity only to pass quickly on to
another, so self-selection in itself appears to provide at least no immediate guarantee of
sustained interest and attention. Another consideration is that the very phrase ‘self-selected’
is deceptive. How do ideas and activities which I might conceivably develop come to me
for consideration in the first place? The answer, presumably, is that such presentations
102â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
come in a multitude of ways: some by pure chance or accidental contiguity, but many
by more deliberate encounter through books, magazines, radio, television, friends and,
of course, teachers. There is also a complex story to be told of why some of these hold
my attention and grow into more developed concerns and others do not. Of course part of
this story is to do with my constitutive core self, compounded of my present concerns and
interests. I have, as it were, no other self from which to encounter new experiences; no
other self from which to conceptualize, understand and know. But this core self is not static.
It has developed and will continue to develop, and is therefore alterable. Novelty itself is
attractive and motivates many activities and changes of activity. People strive deliberately
to develop new activities and to this end often welcome the presentation of new ideas and
proposals from others.
All this is but a sketch of the confusions attaching to the place of interest in education.
What emerges, I believe, is that there is no need for immediate pupil control of the
determination of the broad content of a liberal education; indeed, there is strength in the
opposed view, namely, that all pupils should be involved in all the areas deemed to be
important by convincing justificatory argument. There should, to be blunt, be an extensive
compulsory core curriculum. Beyond this there is no reason why schools should not have
facilities for offering all kinds of activities and studies to be chosen on the basis of personal
interest. The charge at the moment, regarding English schools, is that the compulsory and
common core is neither broad enough nor lasts long enough to be a satisfactory general
and liberal education, and that the choice area comes too early and is too large a part of a
young person’s curriculum.
What emerges also is that problems of motivation are not essentially problems of choice
of content, but methodological and strategical problems of pedagogy concerned with how
to engage pupils in what is demonstrably worthwhile. This is a main concern of the next
chapter.
 8
The methods of a liberal education

8.1 Introduction
Although the idea of a liberal education is appropriately attached to certain kinds of
curriculum content rather than to others, it is equally importantly attached to certain
teaching styles, strategies, methods and intentions rather than to others. Even if an item of
curriculum content was carefully selected from the body of such content already discussed
it could fail to constitute a part of liberal education by the manner in which it was taught.
The reason for this concern for teacher style, strategy, method and intention is connected
with our initial characterization of, and justification for, liberal education. Liberal education
has been characterized in this work as that education which is liberating from the ties
of the present and the particular, concerned with knowledge and understanding which is
fundamental, general and intrinsically worthwhile, and concerned with the life of reason.
Methodological considerations also arise from the ethical nature of the main justification
of liberal education that has been given. In dealing with this justification I said:

the moral duty of adults to children is reasonably clear and has two parts. The positive
part is a duty to help children, in all ways possible, to become increasingly rational and
autonomous up to the point where the moral duty to do this for themselves might reasonably
be expected to take over. The negative form of this duty is an obligation not to allow or
encourage the social environment to foreclose on the possibilities and life-styles open to a
child’s future as a rational and autonomous being.1

We thus have a number of considerations which point to treating people in certain ways
rather than in others while they are being liberally educated; or, to put it more strongly, in
order to be sure that they are being liberally educated. We must teach in such a way as to
liberate people and not bind them or restrict them; so as to bring about in them genuine
knowledge and understanding rather than the possession of some rote repertoire; so as to
bring about real concern for what is justifiably worthwhile; so as to bring about concern
for and competence in the life of reason; and so as to ensure that pupils are respected, and
come to respect themselves and others, as rational and autonomous persons. We must try to
avoid teaching them in ways that act against these intentions.
It is tempting to write about each of these desirable intentions in turn. In fact, however,
they are by no means so easily separable as that, since any given action or style of a
teacher is likely to bear, for good or ill, upon more than one of these considerations.
I shall therefore discuss the methods of a liberal education under the following three broad
headings: teaching for evidence, teaching for understanding, and teaching for care.
104â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
8.2 Teaching for evidence
Knowledge properly speaking, I have said, is best conceived of as justifiable belief. To
know is to have a belief that I can be reasonably sure about because of my grasp of the
evidence or warrant which justifies the belief. Belief in itself is simply a state of mind in
which I give assent to certain propositions or to the appropriateness of certain actions.
Beliefs, as a matter of psychology, can be held with varying degrees of strength of
conviction, as Anthony Quinton has pointed out, and this strength of conviction has no
necessary connection with evidence or justification.2 A person is rational, Quinton reminds
us, to the extent to which his or her strength or belief is proportionate to the understood
logical justification of those beliefs. A person of strong convictions is not necessarily a
person of strong rational convictions.
These distinctions are connected with the idea of liberation in education. To have a
strong belief X, which is not based on an understood justification, is either not to know
why I believe X, or it is to hold the belief for some reason that does not in itself amount to
an understood justification. A common reason of this kind is to believe X because someone
else has told me of the truth of X—a teacher perhaps. There are certain matters on which
the say-so of someone else would be quite appropriate as evidence for my belief. For
example, my belief that my wife has toothache, held on the grounds that she says so,
is a perfectly rational belief. These cases are special cases, however, pertaining to self-
knowledge which cannot be communicated in any other way. There are other matters on
which we commonly accept the say-so of others because these others are held to be experts.
These matters might, for example, be those of law or medicine. On these matters we assume
that the knowledge—i.e. the stock of justifiable beliefs—is greater with the experts than
it is with us. We do not so much obtain our knowledge from the experts as come to hold
beliefs on the basis of their knowledge. For example, my doctor knows that my symptoms
indicate the presence of gall stones, and I believe him because I have grounds for trusting
his claim to know.
Now the relationship between a pupil or student and a teacher could be considered to
be like that between patient and doctor, or between client and lawyer, in respect of beliefs.
The teacher has a stock of knowledge and the task of getting pupils to come to believe
the propositions embodied in this knowledge, as the doctor and lawyer have stocks of
knowledge out of which they try to get their patients and clients to believe certain things.
This, however, would be a grossly inappropriate model for the teacher-pupil relationship
in liberal education because of the liberal educator’s duty to liberate rather than to bind
students.
It is only to the extent that the knowledge I operate with is genuinely mine that
I am liberated from intellectual dependency and can be autonomous. It is undoubtedly
necessary, in a complex civilization, to be dependent in certain respects upon the technical
knowledge of others; but there is also no doubt that to the extent I am thus dependent my
autonomy is diminished. To be dependent for all or nearly all my beliefs on the knowledge
of others, however, would be to live in a strange state of paradoxically civilized barbarism.
The paradox arises from the fact that the knowledge might well be sophisticated and
technical, the product of an advanced society, whereas the barbarism arises from the lack
of distribution of such knowledge, most people holding such knowledge on the say-so
of others. In this respect people would live in a similar mental state to that of primitive
 The methods of a liberal educationâ•… 105
tribesmen relying for their beliefs on the unexamined utterances of witchdoctors and the
hand-downs of ancestors.
Liberal education is not merely the exercise of letting pupils see what is known and to
believe what they are told and shown, it is the exercise, as far as is possible, of getting pupils
to actually know, and that is to get pupils to steadily expand their own stock of justifiable
beliefs. Another way of putting this important idea is to say that obtaining beliefs from the
knowledge of others, as from the doctor or lawyer, may in certain ways be very helpful
but is never educative. Beliefs only become educative, at least in the sense of liberally
educative, when they are taken in, assented to, in certain ways rather than others. That is
to say, beliefs must be entertained and assented to on the basis of understood justification
if they are to be liberating by being educative. If I understand the justification for a belief,
see the point of the belief, then I am liberated from whatever was the source of the belief,
teacher, textbook, parent or whomsoever. The liberating aspirations of a liberal education
can only be met, therefore, by teaching in a way that aims at getting pupils to grasp the
appropriate evidence for beliefs as well as the beliefs themselves. We might describe this
as teaching evidentially, or evidential teaching.
Not only are the liberating aspects of a liberal education met most satisfactorily
by teaching evidentially but so also are our concerns for respecting the pupil. It will
be remembered that in 2.3 the idea of respect for persons was linked with the idea of
justification in two ways. The first way was that the treatment of persons by persons always
calls for justification, and the second way was that to treat someone with respect as a
person must always involve treating that one as a reasoner and a justifier, i.e. as a creature
for whom justification matters. The discussion in 2.3 was summed up as follows:

Education involves the influencing of some people by others and therefore calls for
justification; but because the subjects of education are persons no educational practice
will be justifiable that fails to recognize these subjects as actual or potential reasoners or
justifiers.

Now to conceive of pupils as either not to need justification for the beliefs they are required
to assent to, or to conceive of them as capable of assenting to the beliefs but not capable of
grasping the justifications, is exactly to fail to respect them in the sense picked out in 2.3.
It perhaps needs no demonstration to show that as well as making for intellectual
liberation and respecting pupils as persons evidential teaching of course satisfies the
characteristic of liberal education as involvement in the life of reason. This must be so
since reason is essentially to do with believing what there is good reason to believe, and
only such, and doing what there is good reason to do or at least no reason for not doing.
There is a further point about the cluster of ideas connected with knowledge as justifiable
belief and the evidential teaching that goes along with it. This is a point about truth and
certainty. In 5.4 I drew attention to J.S.Mill’s concern that truths should not be handed on as
what he called ‘dead dogma’ even though the teachers saw them as unquestionable truths.
I take J.S.Mill as meaning by ‘dead dogma’ the passing on of these truths with no concern
to involve pupils in the evidence supporting such ‘truths’, and this is quite in accord with
what I have been arguing. But there is another side to the idea of ‘dead dogma’ which is the
belief in the idea of ‘truths’ being sufficiently well established to be no longer questionable.
106â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
What Brand Blanshard has happily called the ‘rational temper’3 would not accept that there
are many areas of knowledge and understanding where such certainty is warranted. The
very word ‘certainty’ is itself used in a variety of ways, as Quinton again reminds us.4 At
least the following four different senses of ‘certain truths’ can be seen in use:
(i) individually and psychologically indubitable beliefs,
(ii) what everyone appears to believe,
(iii)  scientific beliefs as yet not disproved about which there appears to be no reasonable
doubt, and
(iv) demonstrable and unchanging logical truths.
However strongly, in the purely psychological sense, a belief is held by one or many
persons this provides no grounds whatsoever for passing such beliefs on to pupils as
unquestionable. It is not unknown for large numbers of people to hold false beliefs quite
strongly. Although there may appear to be no presently available answer to the question
‘Why is X to be believed?’, nevertheless the question is very properly put. Similarly,
that something is believed by very large numbers of people, whilst it properly makes
me question my scepticism, is no reason for the unquestioning transmission of the belief
as true.
Scientific ‘truths’, especially in our age, often are accepted as unquestionable once the
‘truth’ is allegedly demonstrated by duly qualified scientists. One does not need to be
a fully convinced Popperian, however, to see that there is no logical necessity for these
‘truths’, that science advances to tomorrow by refuting the ‘truths’ of today, that final truths
do not appear to be reached, and so on. No pupil could be properly introduced to scientific
inquiry on the assumption that he was entering a domain of indubitable truths.
This appears to leave the area of logical truths as the only area in which a full-blown
notion of certainty can be entertained. There is a sense in which we could say that
logical truths are certain. Unless the meaning of the symbols has changed (4×7)=(30−2)
is indubitably true. Even this, however, does not justify us in passing on such truths as
unquestionable since we want the pupils, as well as ourselves, to see why such propositions
are to be believed, and, indeed, why they are to be believed indubitably.
There are thus two further reasons for teaching for rationally justifiable beliefs by
evidential teaching. Firstly, because in most areas of knowledge our beliefs can be no more
than rationally justifiable, though they ought to be no less; and secondly, because even
where truths do seem certainly established by their logical nature they will only come to be
held as justifiable by those who come to understand the justification, those who in Mill’s
words come to them as ‘living truths’ rather than ‘dead dogma’.
There are different kinds of arguments supporting the practice of evidential teaching and
the bringing about of rational beliefs which are to do with the effects on liberal educators
themselves rather than with the pupils. These arguments are not concerned with logical
necessities but with the likely effects upon teachers of one conception of their task as
compared with the likely effects of a different conception. For example, a teacher concerned
to teach evidentially, with attention to the justification of the beliefs he is involving
pupils in, is more likely to continually refine his own understanding of the appropriate
evidence and its relation to the belief, and this continual attention to evidential structures
is likely to make such a teacher a better explainer. Such a teacher will have more regard
 The methods of a liberal educationâ•… 107
for the effect of teaching on the mental structures of pupils and be less concerned about
the rote regurgitation of isolated ‘facts’. Our evidential teacher, too, will have a sharper
realization of the varying status of evidential claims across different kinds of knowledge
and understanding, knowing that the justification of beliefs in some areas like religion,
morality and politics is far less clear and agreed than in areas like science and mathematics,
and vary teaching strategies accordingly. In assessing and examining a teacher concerned
in this way will distrust the value of testing factual recall and strive to find other ways of
getting at the more complex structures of the pupil’s understanding.
There is one more consequence of teaching for rational belief rather than in some sense
of conveying fixed truths. Beliefs entertained evidentially, rationally, are always in principle
entertained temporarily. That is to say, they are always open to change on the presentation
of further relevant evidence. The rationality of pupils, or anyone else for that matter, is
to be judged by the relationship of their beliefs to the evidence that they are known to be
acquainted with or that they can reasonably be expected to have been acquainted with. It
is this thought, presumably, that lies behind Jerome Bruner’s oft-quoted claim that any
knowledge can be introduced to any pupil at any age with intellectual integrity. Many
of the beliefs of earlier generations about the structure of the universe, the shape of the
earth or the working of the human body were neither irrational nor non-evidential, but
simply based, and often very sensibly based, on the evidence available to them at the time.
We sometimes now try to take pupils beyond the evidence they can grasp and thereby
force them into a rote and non-meaningful learning situation. It is sometimes supposed
that Piaget has told us that children cannot reason or think evidentially until they reach the
formal operations stage. This, of course, is not the case. The Piagetian claim is rather about
the nature of the evidence that can be grasped and the impossibility, at an early stage, of
children considering evidence hypothetically, or abstractly rather than concretely.
Teachers should not therefore worry unduly about the simple explanations that children
must necessarily be involved in at first. As long as such explanations are reasonable and
understandable, and seen by pupils to be based on certain kinds of evidence, then the
procedures, though simple, are rational and evidential. For example, young children might
well be trained more in applying the evidence of their own sight and hearing before they
come to modify this with magnifiers, microscopes, radio and telvision and the like. They
might calculate and reason themselves before seeing how calculators and computers might
help to extend their skills. They might be led into inquiry about their own past and that of
their family, their friends and their locality before simply being told about the Romans, the
Napoleonic Wars, or whatever. They might be more engaged in talk about why they like
or dislike books they read, before being told what is good and bad and why—and so on.
The principle, I think, is clear. That beliefs thus formed will require modification as further
things are learned and further experriences encountered will come as no shock or surprise
to pupils who hold their beliefs evidentially because of appropriate teaching.

8.2.1 Indoctrination
I refer briefly to the concept of indoctrination mainly because there has been so much
discussion of it in the literature of philosophy of education in recent years. Much of this
discussion has been purely definitional and conceptual, addressing itself to the question:
108â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
‘What ought properly to be called indoctrination?’ The ‘Oxford English Dictionary’ gives
no indication of the derogatory connotation that the word has come to have in educational
discourse. The main meanings given are: to imbue with learning, to teach, and to imbue
with a doctrine, idea or opinion. It would be to chance very grave misunderstanding indeed
to use the word with these neutral meanings now in educational company where the word
has a clear derogatory sense. Whatever else indoctrination might mean, educators seem
agreed, on the whole, that it is bad. What they are not agreed about entirely is what it is
about indoctrination that makes it bad.5
I have no intention of reviewing the semantic arguments here, but behind most of them,
I believe, is the common ground, not always made explicit, that to indoctrinate someone is
to get that someone to hold a belief in ways and on grounds that are non-evidential. There
might be many reasons why a person would wish to do this to another, or it might be done
quite unintentionally: the nature and consequences are the same, i.e. the recipient comes to
hold a belief that is just ‘one superstition the more’ rather than to hold a rational belief. It has
been suggested that the essence of indoctrination lies in the intention of the indoctrinator to
implant an unshakeable belief.6 I cannot see that the procedure is any the less indoctrinatory
if there is no such intention but the teaching is none the less non-evidential; but it must be
agreed that the consequences of the non-evidential inculcation of beliefs often do seem to
be that the belief becomes very fixed, contrary to the relative openness of the way in which
rational beliefs are held. The reason for this is not too difficult to see. If a belief is not held
on the basis of supporting evidence anyway, then the adducing of evidence or argument
to change the belief will hardly be of much avail. And of course it is not, as any one who
has tried to combat religious or racial prejudice by rational argument will know—the word
‘prejudice’ simply being another name for beliefs and attitudes held non-evidentially.
The term ‘indoctrination’, then, is a convenient label, though by no means a necessary
or essential one, for certain kinds of teaching which stand opposed to the ideal of evidential
teaching urged in the previous section. This would be teaching where the teacher might
be concerned that beliefs are justifiable but is not concerned to involve the pupil in that
justification, either at the level of acquaintance or understanding. Much indoctrination in
this sense goes on in school with no malicious or pernicious intention, but solely because
of teachers’ own beliefs about lack of time to involve pupils in evidence, the pressure of
overloaded syllabuses, or the alleged incapacity of pupils to cope with evidential learning.
Such a widespread concept, whilst it clearly excludes evidential teaching from its
meaning on the one hand, also on the other excludes—must be distinguished from—the
kind of teaching where the teacher has no regard that the beliefs being transmitted are
justifiable at all. This would be the teaching of known falsehoods. One hopes that this is
not so common as indoctrination but it always remains a possibility, especially where, for
political and other reasons, it is deemed that other considerations than truth are overriding.
The appropriate term here, also with its own historical journey from neutrality to derogation,
is ‘propaganda’.
We have so far conceived of three broad ways in which educators might set out to bring
about beliefs or to influence and change beliefs:
(i) with no concern that the beliefs are justifiable at all—i.e. lying or propaganda,
(ii) with concern that the beliefs are justifiable but no concern to involve pupils in the
evidence—i.e. indoctrination, and
 The methods of a liberal educationâ•… 109
(iii) with concern that the beliefs are justifiable and that pupils should come to grasp the
evidence that warrants the beliefs—i.e. evidential teaching.
The liberal educator, I am claiming, should practise (iii)—evidential teaching, as far as is
possible with additional aspects yet to be considered.

8.2.2 Training and practical activities

Much of education is concerned with getting people to do things as well as getting them
to believe things. As with believing, doing can be more or less intelligent. That is to
say, the doing—the actual performance—can be more or less rooted in knowledge and
understanding about what I am doing, why I am doing it, and why I am doing it this
way rather than in alternative ways. It is always tempting, when trying to get another
person to do something correctly, to be satisfied when the purely behavioural aspects of
the performance are judged as correct by the teacher or trainer. In many walks of life this is
adequate—if the lathe operator produces satisfactory turnings, the cook satisfactory pastry,
the cabinet-maker satisfactory joints, then what else is there to worry about? In liberal
education, however, the goals are different.
This is an important distinction having considerable bearing particularly on how we
teach pupils in the so-called practical subjects in liberal education. It should be clear
from all that has gone before that, whilst many practical activities will be part of a liberal
education, their presence in such an education is for specific and limited purposes. These
purposes might be summed up as:
(i) Instrumentally serving the intellectual purposes of liberal education: e.g. writing, using
measuring devices, using purely instrumental equipment like microscopes, balances,
audio-visual devices and reference equipment, and developing keyboard skills.
(ii) Engaging in practical activities in order to understand a human practice which cannot
properly be understood without such engagement: e.g. painting, playing a musical
instrument, singing, modelling, working with various tools and machines, dancing
and acting.
Although there is a sense in which all the performances exampled above can be labelled
‘skills’, and a sense in which the proper development of skills involves training, there is
also, however, a sense in which the word ‘training’ sets up a connotation opposed to the
purposes of a liberal education. Many teachers feel intuitively uncomfortable in the face of
modern pressures to train pupils in certain skills, and I believe this intuitive unease to be
well founded. There are two reasons for this: Firstly, ‘training’ is most appropriately used
to name an activity of specific preparation in which the trainer helps the trainee to develop
skills, possessed by the trainer, and which the trainee will go on to use in some sustained
way as hobby, sport, trade or profession. We thus speak quite properly of the training of
boxers, jockeys and athletes, though we also talk of the training of physicists, chemists
and engineers. In liberal education, whilst it is both appropriate and necessary to enable
pupils to do things of the kind exampled above, it is neither appropriate nor necessary to
train them in these activities in the hard sense of ‘train’ just indicated. Indeed there would
not be time to do so given all the demands of a liberal education. Something of the feel
110â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
of what I mean here can be obtained by contrasting the elements of the following pairs of
statements:

He is able to sing He is a trained singer

I am able to measure I am a trained measurer
She can play the piano She is a trained pianist
I can use a lathe I am a trained lathe operator

A liberally educated person might well be able to sing, measure, play the piano and use
a lathe. It would not be a function of liberal education, however, to ensure that a person
became a trained singer, a trained measurer, a trained pianist or a trained lathe operator.
The second reason for supposing teachers’ suspicion of training for skills to be well
founded is the association of the word ‘training’ with some kind of unthinking performance
repeated and developed by varieties of simple imitation or conditioning. The model here,
presumably, is animal training which necessarily is characterized in this way; but the idea
is also associated with crude forms of human training practised, in the past at least, in
the armed forces and in schools. There is little doubt that large number of human beings
have been induced to perform—behave—in certain ways rather than others by techniques
involving force, threat of force, unpleasantness, reward, authority, conditioning or extrinsic
motivation of some kind. They have, in a strictly pejorative sense of the word, been
‘trained’, and it is this connotation of ‘trained’ which fills many educators with unease,
and properly so.
Now it could be argued in respect of this second reason for unease about training for
skills that it is largely a historical argument having no present force. Training is not now
like that, it might be said. Trainers are much more efficient and less crude and involve
trainees much more in understanding what they are doing. There is no doubt some truth
in the claim that these kinds of things are done better now than they were. Training in the
armed forces, for example, is highly efficient and often brilliantly conceived, though it is of
course very specific, intensively practised and at least likely to be used for some time in a
sustained way. In schools the picture is more confusing. Attention to overt performance and
unthinking obedience and compliance is still high in some places and in some activities.
To the extent that it is not like this, and to the extent that pupils are involved in fitting
their performances into a framework of knowledge and understanding, then to that extent
we could say that liberal education is going on. It is also true to say, however that the
extent to which such knowledge and understanding is involved is perhaps a measure of the
inappropriateness of the word ‘training’ to name what is going on.
As with the teaching of beliefs, then, the teaching of practical activities in a liberal
education should be, as it were, evidential. That is to say: the activity, the performance, the
actual behaviour, should always be in a setting for the pupil such that it involves appropriate
knowledge and understanding in some wide sense. The activity should also be in a context
where the focus, both for teacher and pupil, is on the way in which the activity itself aims at
some knowledge and understanding appropriate to a liberal education, not just at some kind
of proficiency in the activity. Two examples might make the point rather more concrete.
 The methods of a liberal educationâ•… 111
Following the publication of the Newsom Report7 in 1963 many schools introduced
courses for young school-leavers based on motor cars. These courses could be seen as
nearer to or further from liberal education on the criteria I have tried to explicate above.
Those courses furthest away from liberal education concentrated on rudimentary driving
skills, necessarily rudimentary because the driving was in school grounds and not amongst
other traffic, and on simple maintenance like wheel-changing and attention to oil and water.
To these activities was often added the rehabilitation of old vehicles which introduced the
pupils to some mechanical skills connected with the repair of motor cars. The instruction
on these courses was very specific and very ‘cook-book’ in nature—that is to say, the pupils
were shown specific procedures to produce specific results. Those courses a bit nearer the
liberal education ideal had more concern for getting pupils to understand things in general
about motor cars with some attention to the general principles of the automobile engine,
transmission systems, and so on. Other courses, yet more liberal in their educational
intentions, used a study of motor cars as examples of even more general principles of
mechanics, chemistry and electricity with applications well beyond the motor vehicles
themselves. One course I saw even used cars and driving as focal points for moral and
social problems discussed with moral and social education in mind.
What we see here is a continuum from crude training on the one extreme to general
education on the other. It should be clear that from the point of view I am trying to argue
(and from others also) drivers and motor mechanics are best trained in institutions other
than schools of general education, and any focus on cars in such schools should only be to
facilitate certain kinds of general understanding.
The rather derogatory use of the expression ‘cook-book’ to describe certain kinds of
instruction in the last paragraph but one points readily to a further example. Cookery can
certainly be taught in a liberal education sense since it properly comes into an understanding
of nutrition, health and the properties of vegetable, animal and other materials when mixed,
compounded and subjected in various ways to heat and liquids. Unfortunately it is by
no means always taught in this kind of way but rather by the simple replication of given
recipes with minimal understanding of what is going on. Successfully cooked products
can, of course, be produced this way. What needs emphasizing is that it is understanding,
not successfully cooked products, that is the proper aim of liberal education.

8.3 Teaching for understanding

Understanding does not always display itself quite so obviously as a cake, a meat pie or a
neatly completed piece of needlework or woodwork. Perhaps more significantly, a failure
to understand does not display itself so plainly as a burnt cake, uncooked meat in a pie, or
uncompleted or botched needlework and woodwork. Even correctly solved mathematical
problems, accurately replicated scientific experiments, correct answers to a teacher’s
questions and precisely recalled items of information do not necessarily indicate more
understanding than their matched failures, or even any significant understanding at all.
The nature of understanding was discussed in 5.5. There it was claimed that all
understanding involves the making in the mind of enlargements, sophistications and
modifications of systems of relationships and linkages in some appropriately non-arbitrary
112â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
and coherent way. From the methodological point of view it is necessary to enlarge
somewhat on the two aspects of these systems of relationships only briefly referred to in 5.5.
The first aspect refers to the undoubted fact that understanding is paradigmatically a
characteristic of individual minds. There are extensions of this idea: I can speak of the
collective understanding of the government, the local education authority’s understanding
of the law on school attendance, or the present state of medical understanding of asthma.
All these uses, however, are parasitic in the sense that unless individual members of
the collective mentioned had individual understandings of these matters, the phrases
would be meaningless. These phrases that sound as though there can be some kind of
group understanding are simply shorthand expressions for individuals understanding
something in the same way, or even sometimes simply agreeing to act as if their individual
understandings were the same.
The fact that understanding has necessarily to be brought about in individual minds
means that importance must be attached both to the state of understanding presently
obtaining in the minds of individual pupils, which will of course vary from pupil to pupil,
and the capacity to understand quickly or slowly, which will also vary from pupil to pupil,
Whatever else is to be seen in the ideas of relating and linking there is no doubt that a
linking must be made between what is to be understood and what is already understood by
the pupil.
The second aspect refers to the kind of linkages or relationships to be made appropriately
within whatever it is that is to be understood. To build, as it were, a word, an idea, a
proposition, an object, into a relationship or a complex of relationships with other words,
ideas, propositions, objects is to understand that word, idea, proposition or object.
Teachers are often aware of the significance of this second aspect of understanding, but
not so much aware of the first. That is to say, teachers know that they must explain as clearly
as possible when introducing new ideas or ideas thought to be new to the recipients: there
must be a logical and connected framework of presentation; connections and links must
be made plain; differences and similarities must be pointed out, and so on. What teachers
often seem not to give so much importance to is the need to link all these relationships onto
those already operating within the mind of a given pupil.

8.3.1 Explaining
Perhaps oddly, the word ‘explanation’ appears frequently in the indices of books on the
philosophy of history, the physical and the social sciences but far less frequently in those
of education, even of philosophy of education. For example, an Open University reader,
‘Conceptions of Inquiry’8, has over twenty-five references to ‘explanation’ in a book of
334 pages, whereas the ‘Second Handbook of Research on Teaching’9, unhelpfully, has one
reference only, and that misnumbered, in a work of 1,400 pages.
The fact that there can exist ‘explanations’ of matters which can be deemed right or
correct in some sense quite independent of any particular person’s grasp of them, and
which will be appropriately discussed under headings like scientific explanation, historical
explanation or explanation in the social sciences, can lead to odd conclusions in the
literature of pedagogy. For example, we find Thomas F.Green saying, in his generally very
helpful book on The Activities of Teaching’10:
 The methods of a liberal educationâ•… 113
It is an important fact, however, that whether an explanation is good or adequate can
be decided without considering whether anyone learns from it. In other words it can be
assessed independently of its consequences for learning. An explanation will be a good
one if it accounts for what is to be explained. If it is well constructed and without logical
faults, then it is a good explanation even when it is not understood by anyone except its
author…. Whether reasons are good or adequate to support a certain belief depends upon
the logical properties of the relation between the belief and its reasons, and not on the
psychological fact that someone happens to accept the reasons. Therefore, an explanation
or demonstration of a certain belief may be a good explanation or demonstration even
though, unfortunately, no one learns from it.11

Green, of course, is not foolish enough to consider that this is all there is to teaching.
The teacher must be concerned to bring about learning and this involves, for Green,
considerations of strategy as well as of logic.
Now there is certainly some truth in all this if we allow the meaning of ‘explain’ to be
monopolized in the way used by the philosophers of science and history. But this is by no
means the only justifiable way, as the ‘OED’ well demonstrates. The natural home of the
concept of explaining does seem to be in the context of a person explaining to one or more
other persons; and in this context an explanation could not be considered adequate unless
grasped, understood, by the recipients. Rather, therefore, than thinking of an adequate
explanation which is somehow not understood, like those successful operations where the
patient nevertheless dies, it seems preferable to suppose an adequate explanation to satisfy
two conditions: firstly, the coherence, consistency and logic internally manifested by the
explanation in relation to what it seeks to explain; and, secondly, the satisfactory resolution
in the mind of the recipient of the explanation of the puzzlement or lack of understanding
which necessitated the explanation. In other words, the teacher as explainer needs to know
both his subject and his pupil. Yet another way of considering this is that where a teacher
explains something to a pupil there could be two appropriate judges of the adequacy of the
explanation: one could be an expert authority on the subject, that is, on the logic of what is
to be explained; and the other, importantly, must be the pupil himself, for only he can know,
in one sense of ‘understand’, whether he has understood or not.
I say that in one sense of ‘understand’ the pupil is the only appropriate judge. This is the
sense, given in 5.5, where ‘understand’ contrasts with ‘not-understand’. It is in this sense
that only the pupil knows whether he has established a meaningful pattern of relationships
in his own mind about the object of the explanation, or not. There was, however, another
sense of ‘understand’ given in 5.5 which contrasted with ‘misunderstand’. In this sense
what is important is whether the pattern of relationships formed in the pupil’s mind is not
only meaningful but correct. A constant complaint of lecturers, teachers and writers, is
not so much that no sense is made of what they say and write, but that the wrong sense is
made—not the sense they intended. In this sense of ‘understand’ the pupil is not likely to be
the best judge of his own understanding and some kind of assessment or judgment would
have to be made by a teacher or other authority. It should be noted, however, that what
constitutes a correct understanding is not equally clear across all areas of the curriculum.
It is not very helpful to the liberal educator to suppose, as Green does, that one side of
this necessary symbiosis is a matter of logic whilst the other side, the satisfactory reception
114â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
of the explanation, is only a matter of psychology and therefore of teacher strategy. That a
pupil fails to grasp the excellently logical explanation of the teacher, always supposing the
explanation given to be so, is not sufficiently accounted for by saying it is a psychological
matter. On the account so far given we can suggest two ways in which the explanation
might be inadequate in this respect. Firstly, the explanation relates in no significant way to
the conceptual and propositional frameworks already present in the pupil’s mind. There is
nothing strange about this: if I have not been successfully introduced to the rudiments of
algebra it will be very difficult for even an excellently clear exposition to explain quadratic
equations to me in any direct sense. There will simply not be anything relevant in my mind
onto which the explanation might latch. Secondly, even if the relevant and necessarily
presupposed framework does exist in the pupil’s mind there might nevertheless be a lack of
concern, a lack of care about the enterprise of trying to understand further; or there might
be a diversion of care and concern, previously devoted to the kind of understanding the
teacher was trying to bring about, because other matters are now seen as more significant
or overriding. It is the second of these two causes of inadequacy that raises the problems
of motivation normally considered to be psychological and to call for appropriate teacher
strategies for motivating pupils. I can think of little more frustrating to the pupil than to use
the motivating techniques appropriate to the second of these difficulties when the problem
is simply the first: in such a case the more successful are our motivating techniques the
more frustrating will be the outcome, since the pupil will be all the more concerned to
understand what he cannot without the necessary prior learning.
I shall discuss more fully problems of motivation in the next section, but one connected
point, well raised by John Passmore12, is properly placed here. I most genuinely and
naturally seek explanations, seek to understand, when I am puzzled by something. This
puzzlement can arise because of the frustration of my everyday endeavours not essentially
connected with education, and John Dewey emphasized this connection between reflective
thinking and the problem-solving necessitated by real endeavours and activities.13 Passmore,
however, makes the different but surely important point:
that a teacher will often need to get his pupils puzzled in order to teach them….
In general, the unpuzzled child is a child who will understand very little. And there may
be nothing in his environment, outside the schoolroom, to encourage him to be puzzled.
Making him puzzled is the first, essential, step towards helping him to understand.14
A teacher seeking to teach for understanding, then, will need to:
(i) be aware of the state of the present understandings of individual pupils being taught;
(ii) have logically adequate understandings himself of what is being taught;
(iii) be a skilful explainer of what is being taught in that
(a) he marshalls presentations logically and coherently, and
(b) relates them well to individuals’ present understandings;
(iv) be aware of areas of understanding where correctness matters and misunderstanding
is possible, and know how to assess for correct understanding; and
(v) be able to generate puzzlement in the minds of pupils when it is not already there.
There is a little more to be said about point (v). In discussing this point Passmore uses the
teaching of philosophy as an example to illustrate the necessity of puzzlement. Pupils, he
 The methods of a liberal educationâ•… 115
says, often have to be helped to become puzzled about, say, the idea of democracy, before
any analysis or discussion of the concept can be fruitful. This is certainly true; but there
is another consequence of this truth that Passmore does not mention but most teachers
of philosophy, especially philosophy of education, will have encountered, and which
generalizes to all attempts to get pupils puzzled. It is this: to be puzzled is to realize the
limits of my present understanding which is incapable of solving the problem, whatever it is.
If this occurs in the pursuit of my own private activities or interest my failure to understand
does not, or need not, affect my self-esteem, my respect for my own understanding.
I can always change my interest to something more readily understandable. But if I am a
pupil, and the teacher deliberately engenders puzzlement within me, where there was none
before, whilst at the same time allowing me no escape from the particular activity, then
whatever ultimately follows the immediate effect is likely to be a considerable deflation of
my self-esteem. This harmful effect is made much worse if the subsequent explanations of
the teacher, designed to clear the obstacle he himself has planted in my mind, patently fail
to do so! I am now left:
(a) more confused than I was before, and
(b) more doubtful about my own capacity to understand than I was before.
Immanuel Kant recognized the problem a long time ago, and expressed his view of the
moral duty of all who, like teachers, would try to correct the errors of others:

Hereupon is founded a duty to respect man even in the logical use of his reason: not to
censure someone’s errors under the name of absurdity, inept judgment, and the like, but
rather to suppose that in such an inept judgment there must be something true, and to
seek it out. In doing so, one should at the same time expose the deceptive semblance (the
subjectivity of the grounds determining the judgment, which were held by mistake to be
objective), and thus, while accounting for the possibility of error, preserve the mistaken
individuals respect for his own understanding.15

I conclude from all this, not that we should not try to get pupils puzzled about things as
a necessary prelude to developing certain kinds of understanding, only that we should be
careful how we do it. Anxiety produced by puzzlement can be motivational up to a point,
but thereafter it becomes counter-productive and can destroy or seriously diminish the
self-respect Kant properly urges us to value. If a pupil’s respect for his own capacity to
understand is lost, then so far as liberal education is concerned, all is lost.
I have argued elsewhere16 that certain conclusions about teaching arrangements can
be drawn at least in part from the points about understanding necessarily taking place in
individual minds and the inescapable variance in abilities to understand quickly or slowly.
I believe there to be arguments connected with these points, with the idea of equally valuing
all pupils’ self-esteem, and with certain ideas of social justice, that would favour a large
amount of teaching in mixed-ability groups, but would also suggest that those subjects
involving individual understanding and not essentially involving group activity should be
taught mainly by individualized learning techniques. That is to say, they should be taught
by methods allowing for individual variations in rates of understanding.
116â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
8.4 Teaching for care
To care about anything is to value it and to treat or respond to it in a way appropriate to its
valued characteristics. Care manifestly involves attention and interest. Although care has
an affective aspect in the person doing the caring, i.e. a feeling of valuing something, and is
therefore to some extent subjective, the notion also implies an objective appropriateness of
treatment or response. For example, to care about a gramophone record, whilst it involves
handling it gently, trying to preserve its playing qualities by keeping it dust-free and
unscratched, also involves playing it from time to time and enjoying its contents thus made
audible. Merely to preserve the record, in an unplayed pristine state, would not really be to
care for it or value it as a record. To care for literature implies that one actually attends to
literature, reads books and poems, tries to find out more about the techniques of literature;
and it also implies that one actually wants to do these things. To care for a person implies
that one values that person as a rational agent and treats them accordingly, doing things that
respect the person as a rational agent and enhance the person’s own respect for themselves
as a rational agent, and to want to do so. Of course such care also involves treating the
person as a living being, seeking to maintain their physical comfort and well-being; but
one might do as much for a pet cat or dog and real care for a person must involve more
than that.
If all values were subjective the connection between education and caring would be
necessarily limited. It might be possible to claim that there are certain things a pupil must do
in order to know what he might choose to value or care about in the future, but there would
be no case for trying to get pupils to care about anything save in the barest of instrumental
ways. My argument has taken a different path and I have argued for the objective value of
those understandings found to be significant in human collective development. Studying
these things, I have argued, is demonstrably worthwhile—pupils ought to study them. If this
is right then it also follows that pupils ought to come to care about these understandings,
to share in their significance, to value them for themselves. The liberal educator on my
account therefore has a difficult job. He has not only to get pupils to know, understand
and be able to do certain things, but he has to get pupils to care about these knowings,
understandings and doings.
This is not a new thought in education. Subjectivism and relativism have not always
been so widely assumed in education as they are now, and the fact that the objective
worthwhileness of what was being taught entailed getting pupils to care about the subject
was the more general assumption of the past.17 This was not always matched, unfortunately,
by methods appropriate to generating care in pupils. This kind of concern for care all
too often became transmogrified into excessive and pedantic obsession with carefulness,
which often meant neatness and obedience to formal and sometimes pointlessly arbitrary
prescriptions having no relationship to the real value of the subject or the learning. This
kind of perverse misunderstanding is nicely caught by John Passmore in his excellent
chapter on these matters:

There once used to be teachers of English composition who were mainly concerned that
their pupils should draw neat red lines at the appropriate distance from the edge of the page
and that the compositions they submitted should contain no cancellations. The pupil who
wrote feebly went unrebuked, the pupil who crossed out a word to substitute a better word
 The methods of a liberal educationâ•… 117
was the victim of his teacher’s wrath. Such a teacher completely failed to appreciate—
perhaps because he thought of himself as training ledger keepers—what sort of carefulness
was his proper concern. Neatly ruled lines, tidy pages, are extrinsic forms of carefulness
in relation to the writing of good English. The choice of the appropriate word, in contrast,
is an intrinsic form of carefulness. The pupil who crossed out a word to substitute a better
one was the careful student, the pupil who let the feebler word remain was the careless
student.18

Passmore is not saying, of course, that neatness of presentation is not a justifiable virtue.
The important point that I am making, and I think Passmore is too, is that to care for
something is to attend to its important characteristics, its valued characteristics, its truly
characterizing characteristics, with affective conscientiousness. One cannot, for example,
be a good scholar without some concern for neatness and order, both in thought and
presentation, but nevertheless these are but the instruments of scholarship, they are not
what scholarship is.

8.4.1 Caring about reason

One of the great underlying types of caring that teachers must engender in their pupils,
because it is presupposed in most other educational endeavours of a truly liberating kind,
is caring about reason. It seems to me that little attention has been paid by educators to this
necessity. R.S.Peters has often made the point, in counter to claims which polarize reason
and feeling, that one can be passionate about reason. This is surely true: for some people
reason matters and such people would suffer great agony of mind if they did not do what
there was good reason to do, forbear where there was good reason to forbear, and believe
only what there was good reason to believe. What is perhaps not so clear is that, sadly,
for many people reason does not much matter. Such people believe and act in spite of all
manner of reasons to the contrary which they can well see. They are impulsive and, to a
large extent, driven by feelings and appetites. It is important to realize that such people are
not necessarily unintelligent, uninformed or bad reasoners. Being good at reasoning and
caring about reason are not the same thing. Perhaps the worst combination of all, from the
point of view of one favouring liberal education in a rational society, is the person of sharp
intellect and sophistic skill who nevertheless does not essentially care about reason in any
other sense than as a tool for getting his or her own way.
Care for reason is a necessary presupposition of proper knowledge and understanding,
and of moral action. A person who does not care about reason will not care about the necessity
of evidence for beliefs, nor see the point of following a difficult argument, of attending to
trains of consequences or of bothering much at all about problems of justification.
What is fully involved in this caring about reason has been well laid out by the American
philosopher Brand Blanshard under the name of ‘the rational temper’, and it would be a
diversion to enter into further description here.19 Two more general points, however, must be
made. Firstly, it must be noted that although it is sometimes assumed that the life of reason
is today’s dominant mode and a greater place is urged in education for emotion and feeling,
it is very doubtful whether rationality really is dominant in either education or social life
generally. My own impression is that the dominant tone in politics and advertising is one
of appeal to feeling and emotion, and that this sets a tone that is increasingly pervasive.
118â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
Selling, the really dominant influence of western society, is not a facilitator of reason. This
is coupled with a prevailing subjectivism and relativism which exalts individual wishes and
desires and is nothing whatsoever to do with the kind of rational autonomy urged here as an
aim of liberal education. Reason, at least in its widest rather than in its purely instrumental
sense, is on the defensive rather than being the establishment that needs shifting. Liberal
educators should be defenders of the rational temper, trying to help their pupils care about
reason in a social context by no means as conducive to that kind of caring as they, the
liberal educators, might like.
The second point is that as far as I know empirical research does not help us very much
on the problem of why it is that some people come to care about reason and others do
not. It would be helpful to know more about the child-rearing antecedents of a concern
for reason. The little that we do know, and reasonable hypothesizing, must serve us for
the present. Since what we are talking about is an affective concern, i.e. it is not just a
matter of knowing, being told, about the importance of reason but of feeling the concern,
being compelled by the concern, then we cannot expect children in school to pick up this
concern simply by having the importance of reason explained to them or pointed out to
them. This will do no harm and is indeed necessary, but it is not sufficient—it will not
by itself do the job. Presumably what must happen is that young people must see care
for reason exemplified in the actions and talk of people already in some sense loved or
respected. Ideally this will already have begun to happen in the relationship between
children and parents, but realistically we know that this is not always the case. Teachers
of young children therefore have a heavy responsibility to provide this exemplification.
Their actions, routines, explanations, expectations and arrangements must be rational and
justifiable in themselves and the fact that they are justifiable made clear wherever possible.
This is not just a matter of talking reason to the child all the time, or demanding reasons
from the child all the time, but rather a matter of providing an atmosphere in which concern
for reason is patently at work and can be absorbed by those operating within it. The reason,
consistency and coherence of what goes on, alongside the affection displayed by the adults,
the teachers, should provide affective comfort and security for the young children, and
should certainly not constitute a system of threats and challenges, though there might be
room for some of that later on when the care for reason has already become part of the
pupil’s make-up.
The idea that the teacher, as a liberal educator, should act as a respecter of reason should
continue throughout education of course; but as the age of the pupil increases it will not
only be a matter of how the teacher does his or her own teaching, explaining and arranging,
but also of what steps are taken to positively engender a concern for reason in the pupil.
Again, in the absence of empirical research we must suggest reasonable hypotheses. If
reason is to be respected the pupil’s attempts at reasoning must be respected by the teacher
and Kant’s injunction about the correcting of error, previously mentioned, must be taken
seriously. When I say that the pupil’s attempts at reasoning must be respected this does not
mean necessarily that they must be subject to extrinsic rewards, for there are dangers in that
direction, too, whereby the care is directed to gaining the reward and away from a proper
concern for reason itself.
It is also reasonable to suppose that we should avoid institutional arrangements which
suggest that real reasoning is only expected of some, in the higher sets or streams, and
 The methods of a liberal educationâ•… 119
something involving less reasoning is expected of others. We should also avoid the
distinction, sometimes made, between those who are to be valued as reasoners and those
who are to be valued as something other than this—games player, athlete or skilled
woodworker. The reason here is not only that in practice this distinction is very difficult to
make since reason always enters into these other activities, but rather that reason cannot
be compared with other things in quite this way. To make someone lose his respect for his
own reason is to devalue him as a person, diminish his self-esteem, in a way that is much
more fundamental than letting someone see that she is not a very good hockey player or
cook. These ideas point to the general desirability again of mixed-ability groupings in
school and to individualized learning techniques, though they are not, of course, the only
considerations in deciding those matters.

8.4.2 Caring about others

There are a number of reasons why the liberal educator should be concerned to engender in
pupils care for other persons. In the first place, and most straightforwardly, I have already
argued that morality is one of the great human practices that pupils should be introduced
to as part of a liberal education. I have also argued, however, that the involvement of the
pupil in all the human practices that are the concern of the liberal educator is to be mainly
about understanding those practices, and not necessarily about training within them; and
in my criticism of Hirst I said that his account of moral education was peculiar because
he excluded any kind of character development or moral training from a liberal education
whilst including it in a more widely interpreted general education. If I now argue, as I shall,
that liberal educators should positively seek to bring about in their pupils an active morality
which must involve care and concern for others, then I could be open to the very criticism
that I made of Hirst, namely, that something extra is being added to the content of a liberal
education that is not justified in the general argument.
The justification for getting pupils to care about others is therefore more complex than
the first simple reason that we have already included morality in the content, though that
remains a part of the justification, if only for the reason that a proper understanding of
morality, as Hare has claimed, does appear contradictory to the non-practice of morality.20
One who cares for reason, therefore, and has come to understand morality, should care
for others.
A second reason is an instrumental one, though not, I believe, a simple example of
this genre of reasons. The disposition to cooperate with others was listed in 7.4 as one
of the necessary dispositions counting as a serving competency. The point here is that it
is difficult to see how anyone not prepared to cooperate with others in any sense could
be liberally educated. The matter goes further than this because it is not just a matter of
cooperating with any others, one’s friends and playmates for example, but with certain
others, teachers and fellow-pupils, from whom specific educational experiences can be
gained. This looks like a concern for others simply because they can help you—a matter
of prudence rather than morality. Such concern would be justifiable, of course, even if it
is at the level of prudence. If I want someone genuinely to help me I must attend to him,
consider his wishes, respect him and so on. The nature of concern for others, or respect for
others, in a liberal education, is far more complex than this, however.
120â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
I want to claim that the respect for reason, without which liberal education is impossible,
and without which one cannot enter into a justification of liberal education, or anything
else for that matter, also implies respecting, caring for, those who are the only founts
or origins or living embodiments of reason, namely persons. There is thus a network
of concepts centred on the concept of a person in which ideas like reason, justification,
liberally educating, caring, respecting and understanding all find a mutually supporting
place. Thus when I say that you cannot properly liberally educate a person unless you get
them to care about reason, and to care about other persons, it must be interpreted at a level
more profound than that of mere instrumentality. It is saying something more like: reason
and care, or reason and respect for persons, are necessary presuppositions of the idea of a
liberal education. It cuts both ways: you are not properly liberally educating if you are not
engendering care for reason and for others; but you cannot justify liberal education unless
care for reason and care for others are presupposed. If that sounds contradictory it is only
because the care for reason and others must already exist in the adults, who then make sure
that it is engendered in the young.
Caring, I said at the start of this section on teaching for care, implies an objective
appropriateness of treatment or response as well as an affective feeling or disposition of
valuing. In the case of caring for persons this primarily involves the treatment of others
as rational, autonomous agents having individual purposes and concerns. I must not treat
others simply as instruments to my ends, but as autonomous agents in relationship with me.
It is important to note some of the cruder deviations from this idea of the appropriateness
of treatment in respect for persons. The aged, for example, are not really being respected as
persons, cared for appropriately, if we rush to take away from them all kinds of decision-
making and responsibility as soon as things become physically difficult for them. All
too often physical existence is prolonged at the cost of a far too early destruction of real
personhood. More relevant to our present concerns, children are not being respected or
helped to develop as persons by being kept in a prolonged state of dependence on their
parents and teachers. Here it is not so much physical dependence that is meant, but the
kind of intellectual and moral dependence brought about by non-evidential teaching and by
emphasis on moral conformity or heteronomy. Helping children to reason, helping them to
become autonomous, helping them to retain self-esteem and respect for their own reasoning
and understanding are all ways of caring for and respecting pupils.
Now this, to the careful reader, could seem like another slip in the argument. We were
talking about teaching for care—i.e. about how to get pupils to care about reason and
others—now we seem to be talking about teaching with care and respect for pupils. The
two, however, are not separable. As with care for reason it is difficult to see how a child will
develop care for others unless he grows up perceiving care and respect manifested to him.
As with care for reason nothing can be much more destructive than a failure on the part
of parents and teachers to practise what is preached. ‘Do as I say and not as I do,’ will not
work as an admonition because what is to be taught here is an affective concern—not rules
of procedure. What is necessary in the engendering of care for others has been indicated
by empirical research rather more than in the case of care for reason. I have tried to review
some of this research elsewhere21 and a detailed account would be inappropriate here. The
conclusions that follow from this kind of work, however, do tend to confirm what might be
expected from reflection on the nature of the characteristics and dispositions being aimed
 The methods of a liberal educationâ•… 121
at. The development of concern for reason and for others seems to be dependent upon the
following:
(i) A loving and trusting relationship between the child and at least one, but more helpfully
some, of the adults encountered in early life.
(ii) The weaning away of the child, by these adults, from sensory dominance.
(iii) The use of what Martin Hoffman22 calls inductive discipline techniques—that is to
say, discipline techniques that are firm, consistent and coherent and involve much
explanation and the use of talk.
(iv) The use of explanations which involve attention to the effects of one’s actions on other
persons, as well as on things and on oneself.
(v) The use of problem-solving approaches, accounting for situations and happenings in
terms of causes and reasons.
Much stress is laid by some researchers (cf. Hoffman) on the complex relationship between
what is cognitive and what is affective in the development of these concerns, the impottant
point being that either is of little use without the other. Point (iv) on the above list is important
here. The theoretical model would be something like this: the adult, either parent or teacher
of the young child, needs to have a warm ‘nurturant’ relationship with the child or there
will be no saliency in anything done or said by the adult. Given the warm relationship and
the consequent saliency then it is important that disciplinary procedures, explanations and
utterances are cognitively coherent, rational and genuinely explanatory. Both the saliency
and the cognitive coherence of explanations and admonitions are advanced if explanations
involve considerations of consequences for other persons: the saliency because of a natural
empathy with other persons, and the cognitive coherence because of the proper inclusion
of persons, other persons, in the frame of reference.
At the school level, if all this is right, then educators of young children particularly
would need to follow these suggestions in their methods of teaching and in their school
and classroom arrangements. Although the affective basis of caring about others is
probably laid in the early years: pre-school, nursery, infant and early junior school, the
necessity of teaching for caring for others continues throughout schooling. In these later
stages, however, the methods will be involved more directly and cognitively in the way
the humanities are taught. Here, as described earlier, we are directly concerned with
knowledge and understanding of the world of persons and their relationships. Here, again,
it is difficult to see how the content and methodology could really be separated. To be
properly motivated to care and respect others one needs to know and to understand a great
deal about persons, their characteristics and their actual and possible relationships, and also
to come to understand reasons for caring for and respecting others at the level of principle.
This is very different from simply being conditioned in some way to care for others, if that
were possible, and the child-rearing practices suggested by Hoffman, Klein and others23
should not be seen in that light. The objective is getting pupils to care for others because
they come to see that as the rational thing to do, and because they have also come to care
about doing and believing what it is rational to do and believe. Thus getting children to
care about reason and getting them to care about others, about persons, are intertwined,
mutually supportive and necessarily related objectives at the heart of a liberal education.
122â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
8.5 Summary
This chapter on the methods of a liberal education has not been about the lesson-by-
lesson techniques of liberal education. That kind of detail, though important, would be
inappropriate in a work of the general nature of this one. Nevertheless I have tried to show
the falsity of the claim, sometimes heard, that whilst considerations of a philosophical kind
might have something to say about the content of an education, these have nothing to do
with the methods of teaching, which are simply practical considerations informed perhaps
by the work of psychologists. This claim is false, I have argued, because there are necessary
connections between the way a liberal education and its content is characterized and justified,
and the justification of the methods, strategies and intentions of those teaching it. In other
words there are certain teaching methods, strategies and intentions that are appropriate to
a liberal education, and there are certain others, no doubt efficient for some purposes, that
are inappropriate for a liberal education and would act against such an education. I have
argued that the methods of liberal education should involve evidential teaching, that is,
getting pupils to hold beliefs because they, the pupils, come to see and grasp the reasons
for holding such beliefs, and not merely because textbooks or teachers say the beliefs are
true. I have argued that liberal educators should try to bring about understanding on the
part of their pupils, where understanding is conceived of as a coherent and consistent body
of relationships entering into and amending the body of relationships already existing in
the mind of the pupil. I have briefly discussed some teaching approaches that would act
against both of these ideals, namely, indoctrination conceived of as non-evidential teaching;
propaganda conceived of as lack of concern for what is justifiable; a narrow conception
of training which emphasized mere skill in performance as against a real understanding
of what one was doing and why; and meaningless rote learning of isolated facts with no
regard for the mental structure or conceptual and propositional framework in which such
facts were to be located in the mind of the pupil.
In addition to all this, which makes great demands on the skill and sensitivity of liberal
educators, I have suggested that such educators have to teach so as to bring about certain
kinds of dispositions to care on the part of their pupils. Such dispositions broadly involve
coming to care about worthwhile studies in their own right and not merely instrumentally. I
have also suggested that the whole liberal education enterprise, at least as characterized in
this work, necessitates pupils being helped to care about reason and to care about persons—
themselves as persons and others as persons. I have tried to show, in very general terms,
what might be involved in getting young persons to develop this kind of caring, and I have
also drawn attention to the relative paucity of empirical research in this area.
 part III
Challenges to Liberal Education

Introduction to part III

The account of liberal education so far given is, of course, a particular view of what should
constitute the basis of the compulsory and universal education provided by a state for its
young citizens at least up to the age of 16. It is possible to find completely different views
of what the basis of such an education should be; and it is possible to find sociological
and political analyses of the place of education in a capitalist liberal democratic state that
would point to the impossibility, impracticability or even the undesirability of successfully
initiating and sustaining the kind of liberal education programme that I have outlined.
These alternative views constitute, as it were, challenges to the idea of a liberal
education that I am proposing and must therefore be considered, however briefly, in order
to face the possible charge of failing to appreciate the threat that they constitute to ideas
of a liberal education. These challenges are not from a single political direction, nor are
they always very clearly articulated, though they sometimes are. Some of them present
additional difficulties in that their particular challenges are rooted in complex bodies
of social and political theory—Marxism, for example—in which conflicting theoretical
factions engage with one another within a rule and semantic structure which is not obvious
to an outsider without considerable study. One characteristic that these views have in
common, despite their political and other differences, is that they turn into action through
a process of simplification. That is to say, although at an academic level the theoretical
nature of the view might be complex, subtle, and penetrated with arguments as to its correct
interpretation, its appearance in the thought and action of a teacher on the job, or of a parent
or education policy-maker, will often take a more stark and usually unqualified form. For
example, complicated theories about the way in which ideologies penetrate and influence
the education system become filtered into simplistic utterances like:

This isn’t a school! It’s a place where those kids can find out once and for all what they’re
up against, where the ruling class says in no uncertain terms to them, ‘Forget you! You ain’t
going nowhere! Go on and learn to tap-dance or be a jitney girl, because you ain’t going
nowhere!’1

These are words from a fictional character in a novel, but Young and Whitty suggest
that most large comprehensive schools would have at least one representative of such a
view on the staff. They probably exaggerate, but they provide a good example of what
I mean. Similarly, and on the other side, as it were, difficult analyses of the relationship
between the provision and control of education services and the economic well-being of a
124â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
country can result in simplistic claims that state education should be largely instrumental,
producing amenable and potentially skilful workers and consumers with a favourable view
of wealth-creation, technological growth and the particular forms of political and economic
management obtaining in the state.
Recent statements from the Department of Education and Science and from Her
Majesty’s Inspectors in England and Wales attempt to assert a view of the curriculum in
which the personal development of the pupil is balanced in some way against what is often
called ‘the needs of society’. This straddles and confuses the issues of justification raised in
earlier chapters of this work and supposes that ‘the needs of society’ are easily discernible
and non-controversial. These statements, important because increasingly they articulate
the intentions of government, lack any clear argument or support for the liberal education
case and therefore leave the ground relatively uncontested for the powerful instrumental
pressures to have their way.
I intend to discuss three aspects of these challenges to the idea of a liberal education laid
out in this book so far. Firstly, I shall discuss the modern form of the utilitarian challenge.
Secondly, I shall look at a sociological view of the nature of knowledge that would
seriously question any kind of objective statement about the universal value of certain
kinds of knowledge and understanding. Thirdly, I shall discuss the view, mainly Marxist,
that in a capitalist state education can be no more than the reproduction of the ideology that
capitalism generates for its own survival. It is suggested that these three challenges raise
issues of increasing complexity and theoretical significance as we proceed from the first to
the third. They also deal with increasing degrees of what one might call ‘hiddenness’ as we
proceed in the same direction, in the sense that arguments supporting utilitarian aims for
education are often quite overt, whereas the forces of ideology, by their very nature, are not.
It is perhaps necessary to make some disclaimers about this selection of challenges. I am
not, for example, saying that they are logically exclusive of one another; in fact they have
a good deal of interconnection with one another, but nevertheless present conveniently
separable foci of treatment. Neither, of course, is this an exhaustive list of challenges,
only my judgment of some important ones. Each of the challenges has already generated a
considerable literature of its own, and this might make the treatment of them here seem an
exercise of supererogation (if the critic is kind) or an exercise of arrogant and presumptuous
superfluity (where the critic is more harsh). It seems necessary to me, however, to treat
these challenges from the particular point of view of their relationship to the offered view
of a liberal education. For the finer points of dispute within each of these challenges, and
they are many, I must refer the reader to the references and notes.
It should be clear from what has already been written and argued that the word ‘liberal’ in
my phrase ‘liberal and general education’, whilst it cannot avoid all political connotation, is
not intended to have either the very direct association with any political party that includes
the word ‘liberal’ in its title, or to be simply associated with what might be called western
liberalism as against conservatism or socialism or whatever. Actual governments, of all
political views, have done some things conducive to a liberal education and many things
inimical to it. No political party that I know of stands overtly for or overtly against the kind
of liberal education I am arguing for. The issue is nothing like as simple as that. What is to
be argued is that in so far as any political view is supposed by its supporters to be rationally
justifiable, then it should necessarily include liberal education in its programme; but that is
likely to be somewhat cryptic without the argument of the next three chapters.
 9
The challenge of economic utility

9.1 The challenge sketched

The view under consideration here takes either a purely instrumental view of education or
places so much importance on the instrumental view as to seriously play down any liberal
education element even when some form of balance between the two is being nominally
advocated. The view has often been tacit or implicit, revealing itself most often in the
criteria apparent in criticisms of the alleged shortcomings of the educational system or of
its lack of relevance. For a pupil to complain that his education is not relevant to the job he
wants to do, or fails to equip him to face unemployment, is to assume that education has
a proper instrumental purpose that it has failed to fulfil. For a prime minister to chide the
system for failing to produce the scientists and technologists the country needs is to assume
that the education system has manpower provision responsibilities that it is neglecting.
For a politician to complain that the education system allows pupils to leave school with
unfavourable attitudes towards wealth-creation or technological growth or competition, is
to suggest that there are proper attitudes for an education system to foster.1
In recent years, however, the demand for at least a strong instrumental element in the
curriculum of secondary education has become more overt, especially from government
agencies and from employers or from institutions that speak for employers. This is so
much the case that a recent HMI discussion paper on teacher training could open with the
statement:2

It has in recent years become ‘a truth universally acknowledged’ that education should be
more closely linked with the world of work and with the country’s economic performance;
and there has been increasing pressure on schools to assess the relevance of their curriculum
to their pupils’ future working lives.

In particular the HMI document is arguing for a revised view of teacher training. Whilst
acknowledging that teachers need to instil in pupils a sound basic education and an ability
to work with others, and that they need as a first priority to be able to teach their subjects
well, the HMIs nevertheless go on to say:3

Initial training institutions should also make positive efforts to ensure that future teachers
understand the part that their subject plays in the economic and cultural life of their society,
and that they have sufficient understanding on the economic foundations of that society,
and the role of industry and commerce in wealth creation, to be able to pass on to their
pupils both information about and respect for industrial and commercial activity.

Presumably the inculcation of respect is not seen here as indoctrinatory because of a surprisingly
naive view of the value of industrial and commercial activity being non-controversial. This
126â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
continues a trend developed in earlier documents. For example, a consultative document
produced by the Secretary of State for Education and Science and the Secretary of State for
Wales in 1977 was able to assert that an aim of schools that ‘the majority of people would
probably agree with’ was ‘to help children to appreciate how the nation earns and maintains
its standard of living and properly to esteem the essential role of industry and commerce in this
process’.4 Admittedly this was only offered as one aim among eight which included aims like:

to help children develop lively, enquiring minds; giving them the ability to question and to
argue rationally, and to apply themselves to tasks;
to instil respect for moral values, for other people and for oneself, and tolerance of other
races, religions and ways of life;
to help children understand the world in which we live, and the interdependence of
nations;
to help children use language effectively and imaginatively in reading, writing and
speaking.5

These aims, with perhaps some qualification, are not necessarily incompatible with the
aims of a liberal education. The issue is really one of emphasis: ‘understanding’ the
economic and political structures of a country leaves open the possibility of differing
critical perspectives, whereas ‘respecting’, ‘properly to esteem’ and ‘appreciating’ all have
a normative tone indicating a clearly and overtly instrumental purpose antithetical to the
idea of a liberal education.
The desire for schools to exercise an overtly utilitarian function is seen differently by
parents and pupils on the one hand and by politicians and employers on the other. Parents
and pupils expect schools to prepare pupils for jobs, for what the Secretaries of State refer
to as working life. Politicians and employers tend to think more in terms of international
or inter-firm competitiveness:

Underlying all this was the feeling that the education system was out of touch with the
fundamental need for Britain to survive economically in a highly competitive world
through the efficiency of its industry and commerce.6

In either case the view of the proper purpose of schooling as instrumental is clear, and
given much more emphasis than other purposes, even though these other purposes might
be adumbrated.
In documents that have followed ‘Education in Schools’ the tension between a broadly
liberal view (generally more espoused by HMIs) and a stronger emphasis on utilitarian
views (generally more espoused by the DES and by politicians) has become more marked.
Two documents appearing in 1980 indicate the difference of emphasis, though it should be
noted that on matters like the desirability of a compulsory core of curriculum elements there
was much more overlap. A statement entitled ‘A Framework for the School Curriculum’,
by two new Secretaries of State, after arguing for a wide range of curriculum elements
continued the earlier theme:

substantial attention should be given at the secondary stage to the relationship between
school work and preparation for working life. Pupils need to acquire an understanding of
 The challenge of economic utilityâ•… 127
the economic basis of society and how wealth is created. Close links between the schools
and local industry and commerce are valuable in this context, but also have wider benefits.
Particular attention should be given to the place of careers education and guidance for all
pupils, including the most able and those in the sixth form…. Systematic careers education
should begin not later than the third secondary year, and it is normally desirable that it
should occupy a specific place in the timetable.7

The other 1980 document, however, produced by HMIs and entitled ‘A View of the
Curriculum’, seemed much more cautious and liberal on the point of career anticipation:

The capacity of young people to profit from whatever opportunities may be available to
them beyond 16 will depend heavily on the education they have experienced up to that
point. Awareness of this is an important responsibility for all concerned with the 11–16
curriculum. On the other hand, an excessively instrumental view of the compulsory period
of education runs the risk of actually reducing pupils’ opportunity at a later stage, by
requiring premature assumptions about their likely futures—for example in highly specific
occupational terms—and by narrowing the educational base on which their potential may
be developed.8

Two further relevant documents appearing in 1981 continued the official discussion on
curriculum matters. The Secretaries of State produced a definitive view on the matter in
‘The School Curriculum’, which was followed later in the year by Circular 6/81 enjoining
local education authorities in England and Wales, and school governors ‘to encourage their
schools, within the resources available, to develop their curricula in the light of what is
said in The School Curriculum’, and claiming that: ‘These views will be reflected in the
Government’s policies which bear on the school curriculum.’9 The School Curriculum’ is
thus an important statement likely to influence the curriculum of schools in England and
Wales for some time to come, and is worth noting in some detail. The document undoubtedly
maintains but also extends and enhances the utilitarian emphasis in a number of ways. To
start with the list of aims set out in ‘Education in Schools’ has become altered in a number
of small but indicative particulars.10 The aim of helping children to appreciate and esteem
the essential role of industry and commerce has now become conflated with another aim
‘to help pupils to acquire knowledge and skills relevant to adult life and employment in a
fast changing world’. Language, which was in the earlier document to be used effectively
and imaginatively, is now conjoined with number and is only to be used effectively! An
early aim, ‘To teach children about human achievement and aspirations in the arts and
sciences, in religion, and in the search for a more just social order’, is reduced to ‘to help
pupils to appreciate human achievements and aspirations’. Physical skills are added to
those tasks that children might properly be helped to apply themselves to. These changes
are slight, hardly to be noted on a first reading, and only noteworthy because they are all in
the direction of sharpening up the instrumental style and because they are unargued. What
is left out is imagination and social concern; what is added is further talk of effective and
instrumental skills. The emphasis is even more stark in the pages dealing specifically with
the secondary school curriculum. This starts with three propositions about the secondary
curriculum: firstly, that it should be planned as a whole; secondly, that it should have a
common core; and thirdly, that:
128â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
education needs to equip young people fully for adult and working life in a world which
is changing very rapidly indeed, particularly in consequence of new technological
developments: they must be able to see where their education has meaning outside the
school.11

No emphasis whatsoever on any humane or liberal aims of education is given in these

guiding propositions, nor is this at all evident in what follows. What is to be valued is
indicated in the following portmanteau of assertions:

Although choices are made, and have to be made, at the end of the third year, every pupil
up to 16 should sustain a broad curriculum. The level, content and emphasis of work will be
related to pupils’ abilities and aspirations, but there should be substantial common elements.
These should include English and mathematics, whose vital importance schools already
recognize in the time and attention they devote to them. To these should be added science,
religious education and physical education: in addition pupils should undertake some study
of the humanities designed to yield lasting benefit and should retain opportunities for some
practical and some aesthetic activity. Most pupils should study a modern language, and
many should continue to do so through the whole five year period.12

Of marked significance here is the brief reference to the humanities, the significance
deriving from the fact that this is the only reference to the humanities in the document. This
is to be compared with a page on science, over a page on modern languages and substantial
paragraphs on mathematics, micro-electronics and craft, design and technology. A long
section on preparation for adult life, which might have been about morality and knowledge
and understanding of persons and personal relationships, in fact reasserts the by now well-
worn claim that:

the curriculum needs to include some applied and practical work, particularly in science
and mathematics; and pupils need to be given a better understanding of the economic base
of our sbciety and the importance to Britain of the wealth creating process13

and goes on to advocate better and more systematic careers education and guidance.
A section on English, although mentioning the word ‘literature’, nevertheless treats the
subject as essentially to do with instrumental skills and says nothing about literature as an
insight into the imaginative understanding of the world of persons.
The whole style of this important official document is an interesting but ambiguous
blend of the overt and covert advocation of the utilitarian purposes of education in the
service of a particular view of the relationship between society, education and the state.
The deeper and more profound mechanisms that might be operating here must await our
discussion of ideology whilst we consider some further relatively overt expressions.
The other 1981 document was produced by the Schools Council and its title, The
Practical Curriculum’,14 was perhaps unfortunate. Such a title looks as if the matter to be
considered is activities like physical education, woodwork and cookery. This would be
a complete misunderstanding since the work aims to discuss the whole curriculum in a
practical way! The kind of curriculum advocated here is, in fact, a highly liberal one and
 The challenge of economic utilityâ•… 129
makes little reference to the needs of society, industry and commerce so dominant in the
other documents I have considered, though it does get carried away with skills talk, as
I shall show.
My point so far has not been to describe these documents in detail, but only to indicate
my view that there is an articulation in government statements of a specifically instrumental
view of education, revealed as much by the assumptions, implications and omissions as by
the more explicit utterances. It is also interesting, and perhaps encouraging, to note that
where HMIs, academics and teachers themselves have produced statements (‘A View of
the Curriculum’, ‘The Practical Curriculum’ and ‘Curriculum 11–16’, DES, HMI Working
Papers, London, HMSO, 1977) the tone has been markedly more liberal. Social historians
can sometimes have a happy and interesting time tracing the lines of development leading
to these differences.
Another way in which recent successive governments have set up mechanisms for the
penetration of schooling by a specifically instrumental view of education is to be seen
in the growth and influence of the Manpower Services Commission, and especially of
its Training Services Division and Special Programmes Division. These divisions of the
MSC have been mainly concerned with providing industrial training schemes for young
people in the 16–19-year-old age range, partly because of a declining provision of such
training by industrial organizations themselves, and then increasingly because of sharply
rising unemployment among young people and the difficulty of finding jobs on leaving
school. Even to provide vocational training for some 16-year-olds while others of the same
age were receiving a different kind of education in school threatened the continuation of
comprehensive liberal education beyond the age of 16; but very recent statements have
indicated an attempt to move vocational education down to the age of 14, and even to set up
special schools under MSC funding if the local education authorities in England and Wales
failed to make provision. The Times Educational Supplement reported:

The Government wants courses to be mounted for pupils in a wide range of ability. It is not
prescribing the content, or whether the courses should be provided wholly in schools or in
a combination of schools and colleges. But it insists that they should lead to a recognized
qualification in technical, computer or business studies, or in the manual trades.15

Resisting the charge that he wants to narrow down the curriculum for the non-academic
pupil the chairman of the MSC, Mr David Young, a property banker, claims that his aims
are just the opposite and not so different from those being put forward by such innovators as
the Further Education Curriculum Development Unit. These claims are not very reassuring
to liberal educators on two counts. Firstly, the published work of the Further Education
Unit can hardly be said to be liberal. The influential document, ‘A Basis for Choice’,16
which proposed a programme for post-16 pre-employment courses suggested that such
courses should include (i) core studies, (ii) vocational studies relevant to a given sector of
employment, i.e. ‘building and construction’ or ‘hotel and catering’, and (iii) job specific
studies. The only one of these offering any promise of continued liberal education would
seem to be core studies, but the listing of the components of such a core soon brings
disappointment to anybody with such expectations:
130â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
The core as a whole should provide opportunities for the young people to develop:
– practical numeracy
– the ability to communicate
– the ability to learn from study, experience and colleagues
– social skills and understanding in a variety of contexts
– self-confidence, self-awareness and adaptability
– a variety of manipulative skills and physical skills
– their awareness of various technological, environmental, political, economic and
aesthetic factors which affect their lives
– a basis from which to make informed and realistic career choices
a nd it should do this in (the) context of their intention to enter the world of work in the
near future.17
It is the direct relationship to vocation that is supposed to provide the motivation for these
students that courses in their ordinary education at school had allegedly failed to provide.
There is, of course, something in this, but only if the training is for a job that one has at least
some reasonable chance of actually doing on the completion of the training. Without that
assurance the very rationale of vocational preparation and its connection with motivation
surely collapses.
A large amount of the material from the Further Education Unit is orientated towards
a skill training approach which appears in its turn to be heavily influenced by behavioural
objectives thinking much debated in educational circles throughout the 1970s. Those
supporting a behavioural objectives view believe that teaching and learning objectives
are only meaningful if they are expressed in terms of directly observable performance
or behaviour. It is significant that educators on the whole have been critical of this view,
seeing it as limiting and restricting, while trainers of various kinds have tended to espouse
the view.18 Examples of the transfer of understandings into skills can be seen in the
following from an FEU publication on ‘Vocational Preparation’ where it is suggested that
understanding society can be assessed in these performance achievements:
– h as examined what is at stake in a given issue, the vested interests and the decision-
making procedures involved
– has experienced membership of a decision-making group and has observed a decision-
making group in action
– has developed background knowledge necessary for general understanding of national
and local government
– has identified personal legal rights, with use of reference books where appropriate, and
knows how to act on them.19
The narrow utility tone here is obvious. These items have little to do with any genuine or
profound understanding of society and certainly do not constitute a refutation of charges
of narrowness. The message throughout this and other FEU documents is that a reduction
of knowledge and understanding to skills is to be favoured, that function-related learning
is to provide motivation, and that the important functions to provide this motivation are to
be work-related ones.
 The challenge of economic utilityâ•… 131
The second count on which the chairman of the MSC fails to reassure a liberal educator
about charges of narrowness is that we have already seen censorship of courses where there
have been attempts really to develop the critical power of the students, especially where
that critical power was turned onto a consideration of the unemployment position of the
students or onto the nature of the courses themselves. A report in the ‘Times Educational
Supplement’ tells us:

The MSC district officials have been told to ensure that everyone running a YOP project
understands that political education must be limited to studying and discussing institutions
like Parliament and the trade unions… Particular care should be taken to avoid politically and
generally controversial content in any literature produced for publication by trainees.20

Again, later, the same reporter noted:

Mr Philip Whitehead, a Labour education spokesman, this week confirmed claims by

a Lancashire youth service team that the Manpower Services Commission had closed
down its Youth Opportunities Programme Course because trainees had produced a report
criticizing the programme. It was clear that the Commission was now using rules designed
to avoid party indoctrination of YOP youngsters to repress the expression of the youngsters’
own views on their plight.21

The important points to note here are that powerful forces, some of them governmental,
are being increasingly influential in imposing a utilitarian form on the education, firstly of
certain groups of 16–18-year-olds, but now of widening groups of 14–16-year-olds still
within the period of compulsory education; and that in the case of the Manpower Services
Commission considerable funds are being made available for this purpose over and above
the funds available to the education service generally.
Two more examples of the utilitarian challenge and pressure are worthy of note before
turning to more specific criticism of this particular challenge. The first of these is interesting
because of the characterization of the intellectually educated person that is given, and the
way in which this is opposed to a honorific description of the creative person of action and
decision. The challenge comes from the Royal Society of Arts and is supported by a very
large number of eminent people including, not surprisingly, David Young, chairman of the
MSC. The Society is promoting what it calls Education for Capability by large notices in
the educational press and by granting its recognition, and sometimes small financial grants,
to institutions running courses which it favours. The manifesto of Education for Capability
contains the following:

There is a serious imbalance in Britain today in the full process which is described by
the two words ‘education’ and ‘training’. The idea of the ‘educated person’ is that of a
scholarly individual who has been neither educated nor trained to exercise useful skills;
who is able to understand but not to act….
This imbalance is harmful to individuals, to industry and to society. A well balanced
education should, of course, embrace analysis and the acquisition of knowledge. But it must
also include the exercise of creative skills, the competence to undertake and complete tasks
132â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
and the ability to cope with everyday life; and also doing all these things in cooperation
with others.
There exists in its own right a culture which is concerned with doing, making and
organising and the creative arts. The culture emphasizes the day to day management of
affairs, the formulation and solution of problems and the design, manufacture and marketing
of goods and services.
Educators should spend more time preparing people in this way for a life outside the
education system. The country would benefit significantly in economic terms from what is
here described as Education for Capability.22

Mentioning the RSA promotion here is solely for the purpose of illustrating yet further the
pressures towards instrumentality in education. One must note in passing, however, the
polemical and rhetorical style which takes the place of argument in the above statement.
The idea of an ‘educated person’ given here is surely a caricature; the idea of the creative
mind, firmly located in a liberal education by most of its exponents, is here monopolized
in the service of utility and deprived of the status of an end in its own right; and pointless
functionalism is lauded with no consideration of the ends to which it is to be directed. The
kind of creativity that is here valued is technological and managerial or entrepreneurial,
not the creativity of art, music, literature or drama. Understanding is disassociated from
acting as though these are two different things. All human agents act, for that is what it is
to be an agent; but whether a person acts out of a coherent framework of understanding or
not will be determined by the extent of his or her liberal education, by the extent of what
Richard Peters has called the person’s cognitive perspective. Understanding the practices
of mankind must include, among other things, understanding the necessity and desirability
of appropriate action, whether that appropriateness comes from technical, prudential or
moral considerations. Capability can not be judged humanistically outside a framework
of liberal understanding, save in the perverted sense that Hitler, Stalin and Genghis Khan
were very capable men.
The eminent signatories to the RSA statement include people from industry and
commerce as well as others from the academic world. Industry and commerce have their
own pressure groups, notably the organization known as Understanding British Industry,
sponsored by the CBI, and working actively with teachers and teacher-trainers to propagate
views with which we are now familiar: the desirability and necessity of wealth creation, the
need for pupils not only to understand industry but to be favourably disposed towards it, the
need to accept the inevitability of technological growth and adapt to it, the need to develop
in pupils the attitudes and personality traits that will help the nation in its competitive
economic struggle, and the need to adapt the education system to these ends rather than to
the ends of liberal education which are characterized as narrow, academic, abstract and not
suitable for the majority.
All of this, and much else like it from individual parents and employers that is more
difficult to document but exists powerfully nevertheless, adds up to a pressure upon
educators that is as strong and pervasive as it is unsubtle. I say ‘unsubtle’ partly because the
assertions have become steadily more explicit and overt, and partly to distinguish this kind
of challenge from the more theoretical material of the next chapter. What is going on here
contains an ideology—of that there is no doubt—but it is not a debate about ideologies in
 The challenge of economic utilityâ•… 133
the sense that the participants recognize it as that. It may be a clash of ideologies of a kind
yet to be discussed; but the assertions are categorically made, and it is worth some attempt
to counter them from the point of view of liberal education in a similarly categorical way,
before entering deeper waters.

9.2 Criticism of the economic utility challenge

9.2.1 The assumptions of non-controversiality
Running through all the discussions of the economic utility model of education, as
I shall now call the collectivity of views I have just been exampling, is an unspoken
assumption of consensus about society, values and education. The assumed consensus is
that of continually accepted technological change and development, strangely related to
nineteenth-century conceptions of the undoubted good of ‘progress’, all taking place in
the context of a competitive free market economy, and in a wider context of international
competitive trade. Also assumed is the undeniable value of wealth creation, ostensibly as
a necessary condition of all else that might be valued, but in fact by its emphasis seen as a
valued end in itself. Education, in this model, becomes a commodity both for the individual
person and for society as a whole, to be assessed like any other commodity in terms of
its profitability or usefulness. The education favoured for the individual is one leading to
a well-paid job; for the employer it is one producing well-disposed and capable workers
and potential managers; and for the state it is one making the country strong in economic
competitive power and united around simple ideas of patriotism. Some of these views are
explicit in what I have been describing, but most of them are implied or taken for granted.
Such a framework of assumed consensus is necessary to give coherence to all the claims
and pressures.
That such a consensus exists as anything more concrete than an assumption or
necessary presupposition is highly questionable. The value of continued technological
growth, especially when dictated and operated by a profit mechanism, is challenged by
many people. Not only does such a challenge come from the expected people: ecologists,
conservationists and the anti-nuclear lobby, but also from groups like the Council for
Science and Society which issued a report in 1981 entitled ‘New Technology: Society,
Employment and Skill’. The kind of questioning about the advance of technology I have
in mind is evidenced by this comment in the CSS Report about the alleged benefits of
automation based on computers:

If we look at past experience, it seems likely that possibilities of this kind, if they can be
realized profitably with the computer, will be implemented despite any protests by those
concerned.
… To follow such a path of increasing automation usually requires an additional
expenditure on capital equipment. Profitability then depends upon a reduction of employment
for a given output, or at least the substitution of less-skilled, and so cheaper, labour for the
more highly skilled. Both courses reduce the demands which are made on human ability,
and a classical economic argument sees this as the creation of new opportunity. The human
resources set free are available for other needs of society, or to increase the production of
134â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
goods. Moreover, an economic mechanism will automatically ensure that this opportunity
is fully used.
Yet the experience of the last fifty years does little to establish confidence in this self-
regulating mechanism. The demoralising unemployment of the 1930s ended only with
the beginning of the Second World War, and it is not clear that the depression would
have ended without the war. The 1970s, against expectations, saw a renewed increase of
unemployment. During the whole period a large proportion of those employed have done
work below their capability. What is striking is that very great effort is expended upon the
creation of the opportunity which unemployment or underemployment represents, and in
comparison almost none upon using that opportunity.23

Such a lengthy quotation is necessary to show the kind of detailed critical argument about the
benefits or otherwise of technological advance that is completely and naively absent from
the statements of those advocating an economic utility model of education. Unemployment
has, of course, become much worse since this report was written, and political commentators
on unemployment consistently play down the very large technologically structural element
within it, hoping instead for some miraculous upturn in international trade to remedy the
situation.
The idea of the undoubted good of technological advance is not only thus questionable,
it is actively questioned by many people and groups of people in technically advanced
societies. Similar detail can be found in literature from the conservationist and anti-nuclear
groups, represented as cranks in much of the establishment media, but actually producing
complex, sustained and serious argument of a most disturbing kind for those prepared to
read it.
It is no part of my present argument to claim that the views now being referred to are
necessarily correct, though I believe many of them to be so. The argument here is that views
about technological growth are far more controversial than could be inferred from DES
documents, HMI documents and other sources referred to in 9.1. For educators to influence
the minds of pupils in the sole direction of the economic utility model of education, in this
and other respects, would be highly indoctrinatory and therefore inimical to the development
of rational and moral autonomy which is the duty of the liberal educator.
Similarly, the background context of the free competitive market as the determinant of
resource allocation is anything but a consensus view of how society should most desirably
operate. The Green Paper (‘Education in School: A Consultative Document), issued by a
Labour Party Secretary of State, talked of the mixed economy as the normal state which
education must come to terms with, as we might have expected from a government largely
in the hands of the right wing of the Labour Party. Conservative politicians and most
industrialists are, of course, more stridently supportive of a larger, if not total, free market
element, and more directly socialist members of the Labour Party and others too far to the
left to be members of that organization would want to see more, or total, central planning
of the economy. The numbers of people prepared actually to vote for one or other of these
positions when dressed up in various guises in election manifestos varies over time. What
is inescapable, however, is the controversial nature of the issue. Politicians and employers
have every right, in a democracy, to argue their case; but it does not follow from this that
any of them have the right, least of all in a democracy, to impose their particular view
 The challenge of economic utilityâ•… 135
on the education system. Such a system, in so far as it tries to bring about political and
economic understanding in the minds of the pupils entrusted to it, must treat controversial
matters as controversial matters. The late Lawrence Stenhouse realized this when asked
by the Schools Council to propose strategies for teaching the humanities, but the strategy
his team constructed and tried so hard to introduce into schools is still only rarely seen in
action. The suppression of student opinion in MSC-sponsored courses, already mentioned,
stands directly opposed to the thoughtful strategy of neutrality and impartiality advocated
by Stenhouse and characteristic of all his work.
If consensus does not actually exist in these areas neither does it exist in the matter of
judging the value of activities by their contribution to wealth-creation. What this kind of
emphasis leaves out of account is any consideration of what wealth is to be used for and how
it is to be distributed. Even nineteenth-century utilitarians made happiness and not wealth-
creation the touchstone of value, and were thus concerned about how wealth was used and
distributed, and contemporary political philosophers have consistently related these ideas
to the justice and morality of the ends to which wealth is put and of its distribution.24 None
of these political theorists appears to believe that a society with more wealth-creation is, in
any simple and unqualified way, necessarily better than one with less. It seems particularly
one-sided to judge an educational system, or even particular educational practices, by the
simple criterion of contribution to wealth-creation for two main reasons. Firstly, because
educators must be duty-bound to introduce pupils to controversial matters as controversial
matters, as I have already said in connection with technological growth; and, secondly,
because schools of liberal education must introduce pupils to those activities and practices
which can be considered as worthwhile in themselves and therefore fit to be considered
as ends rather than as means. To take small but illustrative examples of what I mean here:
it would be pointless to judge the value of my listening to music, reading poetry, or even
doing my gardening, by assessing their contribution to wealth-creation when these things
are for me intrinsically valued ends; when they are, in fact, activities on which I use my
wealth rather than means to increase it. It is true that for some people the issue becomes
confused and wealth-creation becomes an end in itself; but that is but one of the peculiar
perversions of modern capitalist society, destructive of justice, morality and a proper
humanity, as Erich Fromm and others have pointed out.25 Education must be concerned
with ends, and to the extent that it is so concerned it is improperly judged on the criterion
of wealth-creation.
The last important controversial area in the economic utility model of education to be
noted here is the emphasis on competition, both individual and national. A full discussion of
the place of competition in education cannot be entered into here, but the point must be made
that the place of competition, in both education and society at large, is controversial. Some
people would favour a much more cooperative society and much more encouragement of
cooperation in schools. Similarly some would favour much more international cooperation
on trade instead of the present automatic assumptions about national competitiveness. Yet
in the model I am criticizing competition is offered as a characteristic of the ‘real’ world,
as though to question competition is like questioning the expansion of metals under heat
or the necessity of moisture for growing plants; whilst cooperation for any other purpose
than to defeat the other team, the other firm or the other country, is corrupting idealism,
out of touch with the ‘real’ world. The assumption is as if Kropotkin had never written, the
136â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
Cooperative Movement had never developed and fraternity had never been a political issue
for which men and women had died on the barricades. Team spirit and loyalty have become
transmogrified, as R.S.Peters puts it, into instruments of destructive competition instead of
universal cooperation among all rational agents.26

9.2.2 The diversion of responsibility

This criticism of the economic utility model of education is directed to the appropriate
allocation of responsibility. Certainly it cannot be denied that there must be efficient
and appropriate vocational training in any community. The criticism made by the liberal
educator is not against vocational training as such, only against the idea that such training
is properly located in schools of general education, or that the needs of such training should
dictate the curriculum content and methodologies of schools of general education.
The paradigm notion of training is to do with preparation for some activity of a relatively
specific kind which, once trained for, a person will engage in for some time. Such were the
reasonable assumptions, for example, of an apprentice; but apprenticeships were features
of a craft-orientated economy which has now all but disappeared from the national scene.
Preparing people, especially young people, for specific industrial tasks is difficult today
for a number of reasons, but two are paramount: firstly, no one can guarantee that a young
person will actually get a job in the task for which he or she has been trained; and, secondly,
no one can guarantee that the technical requirements of a task will not change very quickly,
even before the young person takes up a job. These difficulties operate profoundly at all
levels, as the Council for Science and Society reports in the case of engineers:

In the university training of engineers, the scientific content is again heavily, and
increasingly, stressed. To teach the current technology and procedures of industry is more
difficult and less rewarding because they evolve within industry and change rapidly. Only
someone directly engaged in the activity can teach it, and what is learned will be rapidly
outdated.27

Yet employers still complain that graduates do not understand modern industry, and that
school-leavers do not understand the particular aspects of work they find themselves
in—if they do find themselves in work—as if this was solely the fault of the university
or school. The very users of rapidly changing technologies, even the very makers of
such technologies, show little signs of grasping these particular social implications, and
education policy-makers can naively say that an aim of education should be ‘to help pupils
to acquire knowledge and skills relevant to adult life and employment in a fast changing
world’!28
Because industry has been unable to cope with these problems itself, and because
of the costs of frequently changing training needs, there have been increased demands
for national patterns of training and increased blaming of schools for alleged failures
to develop appropriate skills and attitudes in young school leavers. Exactly what these
appropriate skills and attitudes are does not appear to have been much discussed outside the
literature of the Further Education Curriculum Development Unit, the MSC, and agencies
serving them. Inside that literature, however, one finds a flowering of talk about generic
skills, social skills and life skills which will have a vocational bias and provide vocational
 The challenge of economic utilityâ•… 137
motivation whilst still being (allegedly) very wide in application. Much of this would not
concern us here were it not for the fact that unemployment has brought many more 16-
and 17-year-olds under the influence of these training philosophies, and because of the
present government’s intention to extend these techniques to the 14-and 15-year-old pupils
in ordinary schools. In the next sub-section I shall look more closely at the characterization
of skills in this literature. Here I am concerned to make the point that the very agencies
who should tackle the problems of industrial training in the context of modern technology
and rapid change, namely the government and industry, have chosen to do so largely by
attacking the general education base and attempting, not to put too fine a point on it, to
take that base over for purely instrumental purposes. This is a grand passing of the buck
and a lamentable shedding of blame and responsibility which has an effect that is doubly
disastrous: it fails to provide adequate industrial training that is directly linked with jobs on
the one hand, and frustrates, confuses and belittles attempts at a genuine liberal education
for all pupils on the other.
Much has been made in some recent discussions on these issues of the need for school-
leavers to be very adaptable in the present-day situation. The need is genuine, but there
are no magic skills for adaptability. The best basis for adaptability is a liberal education
which has encouraged a wide understanding and the development of reason and autonomy,
in the fullest sense of those oft-misused words, without any early prejudging of how this
understanding might later be put to vocational and career use. The very rate of technological
change argues in favour of liberal education for all, and not against it; and only from such
an education can come adaptability, if that is what is necessary, or the critical power to
work for a social control of technology as that increasingly becomes necessary. Liberal
educators should be left to their logically prior task, and only after that should those
properly responsible for industrial training see that it is efficiently undertaken.

9.2.3 The characterization of skills

It is odd to note that most of the Further Education Curriculum Development Unit teaching
material that is so favoured by the MSC attempts to characterize everything in terms of
skills. These are not only skills like being able to use a screwdriver or an electric drill, which
would be clear and comprehensible, but much more grandly named skills like ‘life skills’,
‘social skills’, ‘interpersonal skills’ and even ‘generic skills’ which are supposed to underlie
all we do. The oddity comes from the contrast between this view that all that is necessary is
to equip people with appropriate skills for work, leisure and life, and the comments on skill
that we find in the Science and Society report on ‘New Technology: Society, Employment
and Skill’. This report traces historically how the advance of technology has generally been
accompanied by an elimination of skill:

The historical evidence is not encouraging. Where it was possible to eliminate skill in the
past, this was generally done. The opportunities which are being offered by the computer
to remove skill from office work, printing, engineering design and other occupations, in
general seem likely to be taken…. It will affect the majority of occupations up to and
within the professional level. There will be a resistance to this development which will be
138â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
strong and tenacious…. If it is unsuccessful, then the great majority of people will for the
first time find themselves united in the misfortune of work which allows them no control
or initiative.29

Of course the report notes that developing technology generates a need for new skills, but
these are for a smaller number of people, usually different people, from those who are
de-skilled.
We seem, then, to have two different accounts. One seems to be saying that education
does not concern itself enough with skills: ‘We believe schools need to make a conscious
effort to ensure that their pupils acquire skills, many of which may prove to have a life-long
value.’30 The other appears to be saying that the trend of technological change is generally
to make increasingly useless the skills that people have acquired.
Part of the confusion here arises from the way in which the word ‘skill’ is used. The
Schools Council gives as examples of skills: initial reading and number skills, the ability
to work alone and the ability to work with others.31 These are among what I have called
the serving competencies because they serve instrumentally the other aims and purposes
within a liberal education. Whether they are appropriately called skills is questionable.
Further skills mentioned by the Schools Council are: a knowledge of political processes,
the ability to interpret scientific data and the ability to make judgments on environmental
matters. What is gained by calling these abilities ‘skills’ is difficult to see. Most writers
agree at a superficial level as to the components of a skill.

A skill is more than knowing, and more than knowing how. It is action too. A skill involves
the application of knowledge to achieve some anticipated outcome. It needs the capacity
and the will to act, as well as knowledge. Skill without knowledge is inconceivable, but
knowledge without skill has a long sad history.32

There are, however, interesting differences of emphasis. If the above quotation stresses the
instrumentality of skills and their connection with action and the will, the following, from
the Council for Science and Society report, emphasizes the knowledgeable control aspect
of skill and marks off two interesting limiting conditions:

we should prefer to stress ‘knowledgeable practice’, and to emphasize the element of

control without which skill does not exist….
Because control is essential for the exercise of skill, it follows that there can be no
skill where everything is completely predictable. Screwing a nut onto a bolt demands at
most dexterity, not skill. In a large measure, therefore, skill is a response to the unexpected
and unpredictable. The blacksmith so places the red-hot iron on the anvil, and strikes it
with such a sequence of blows, that its shape converges to the horse-shoe he desires, even
though his actions will never be the same on two occasions.
… On one side skill is marked off from more trivial accomplishments such as dexterity
or ‘knack’. On another it is distinguished from activities which are intended to affect people
rather than things… ‘managerial skill’ has a manipulative sound if it is applied to the
leadership of people. The ‘skilled negotiator’ or the ‘skilled advocate’ seem to contradict
 The challenge of economic utilityâ•… 139
this rule, but reflection will show that both operate in situations where human contact is
circumscribed and manipulation is sanctioned.33

The suggested limiting conditions set in this quotation are, it seems to me, sensible ones
which accord with our normal usage of the term ‘skill’. On the one hand it accords with
our intuitive idea that skills are never merely manual and always have a strong cognitive
determination which is sometimes almost entirely determinant, as in the doctor’s skills
of diagnosis which cannot be disassociated from his knowledge and understanding of
anatomy, physiology and pathology, as Ruth Jonathan points out.34 On the other hand the
limiting conditions accord with our unease when morality, personal relationships and even
certain features of communication are characterized as skills. People can, of course, be
skilfully manipulated by others. The point is that this has usually been seen as a perverted
side of human relationships, to be spoken of in derogatory terms, and having nothing to do
with those humanistic aspects of morality, personal and social relations which should be
the concern of liberal educators.
These concerns for life, persons and society are, however, complex and are only to be
understood by the prolonged study of the kind of content discussed in 7.5.1. The advocates
of a skill approach are obviously attracted by a simple view of skills which they then
project into matters too complex to make the appellation appropriate. They seem to want
the advantages of simplicity which lend themselves conveniently to precise statements of
objectives and easily manageable assessment and monitoring:

In specifying the type and level of skill they intend their pupils to acquire teachers come
near to setting themselves precise aims. Schools need to decide and state exactly what
skills they do hope to develop in each of the main areas of experience they are concerned
with. They could use statements of this kind as a basis for self assessment.35

Yet at the same time this simplicity and precision must be injected into complex areas like
‘verbal skills as vehicles for thought, feeling and imagination’36 because the more complex
realms of human action and reflection are clearly the most important and valuable.
Perhaps the fallacy of thinking that these complex areas can be characterized as skills
arises from the fatal slip from the properly adverbial or adjectival to the improper substantive
which is so ready a temptation of language. Because a person can be a thoughtful politician
or an imaginative architect it is tempting to think that there are reifications like ‘thought’ or
‘imagination’ which can be readily identified, isolated and trained for. Similarly, because
it is meaningful to talk of someone being a skilful thinker, or expressing their feelings
skilfully, we are tempted to believe that there is a ‘skill’ to be identified, isolated and
trained for. This reaches its maximum absurdity in notions like ‘life skills’, ‘social skills’
and ‘generic skills’, as if it were meaningful to think of people as skilful at life, in society
or in some universal generic sense. These conceptions are either vacuous or pretentious
names for isolated and relatively trivial abilities that might in some sense be subsumed
under such titles, in the sense that blowing one’s nose efficiently or cutting one’s toenails
adequately are ‘life skills’. Ruth Jonathan puts it very well:

It begins to look as if we have only to dub any desirable capacity or area of experience a
‘skill’ in order to suggest it can be easily identified and acquired. Advocates of the teaching
140â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
of ‘life skills’ or ‘surivival skills’ either have something utterly trivial in mind (like the
ability to change plugs or walk through doorways), or something hopelessly vague (like the
ability to be innovative or to work cooperatively) or are simply proffering glib new labels for
the old educational aims of moral autonomy, rationality and aesthetic discrimination. If we
are serious about the desirability of such goals we must look for advances in epistemology,
psychology and ethical argument and be prepared to apply these insights in education,
rather than following the blind alley of a behaviourist-inspired skill-based approach.37

Other people are wary of the skills approach. Bernard Davies, writing for the National
Youth Bureau, defends what he sees as a ‘social education’ orientation of youth workers
against the pressure to go over to a skill-based approach. He rightly locates social education
in the broad tradition of liberal education:

advocates of social education who wish to resist the drift to social and life skills training
may need to be looking for alliances with all those other educators now trying to defend the
liberal and personalised traditions of education generally.38

He also shares my view, or appears to do so, of the importance of justifying and substantiating
a liberal education philosophy if one is to be in any position to resist the encroachment of
a crude skills approach:

youth workers, teachers and others involved in social education need to regain their nerve—
their conviction that some of the person-centred, critical and creative goals to which they
have been committed are still valid.
… If they cannot re-assert what is distinctive about the theory, philosophy and practice
of their specialist field of work, they cannot hope to resist, still less to influence, the cruder,
often highly mechanistic and behaviourist forms of social and life skills training now being
foisted on so many young people.39

It was noted in the previous sub-section that only one immersed in the practice of a skill,
properly so called, can train another person in that skill. This was the long-standing basis
of apprenticeships and many other less thoroughgoing types of on-the-job training. If we
are speaking of the skills of operating a lathe, a computer, a sailing dinghy or anything
where particular processes and performances are to be explained and demonstrated by one
person to another who then practises the processes under the eye of the expert, then this is
an important part of the paradigm of skills. If it is, however, then even more doubt is cast
on the idea of life skills, social skills, moral skills and the like. Who are those arrogant
enough to claim the necessary expertise to train others in these areas? What qualifications
should they possess and what experience should they have had? What is their ongoing
practice of the expertise which trainees watch and then practise for themselves? What
is the rationale of their explanations? How does it escape the controversy found in these
fields for thousands of years by philosophers and other reflective persons? Perhaps it is
simply ignorance of all these problems, arising from prolonged immersion in action and
the assertion of the will.
I must end this sub-section, and lead into the next, with what after all is the liberal
educator’s main complaint about the emphasis on skills. This is to do with the way in which
 The challenge of economic utilityâ•… 141
any emphasis on skills divorces the instruments from their purposes, separates means
from ends. Logically, of course, skills are not separable from purposes and ends. It is the
characterization of particular purposes that helps us to see the use of a particular skill—ball
control in football, say—and there is no performance that is just a skill in any isolated
sense. To make this point, obvious though it may seem to be, is immediately to diminish the
importance of instrumental skills relative to other considerations like being able to choose
our ends in some understanding and informed way; like entering into an understanding of
the values involved in different ends; like considering the morality of certain means rather
than others, even when the ends are determined; and like understanding the varied and
multitudinous practices of humankind which might or might not come to be valued ends
for us. Ruth Jonathan again makes the point crisply when she says that ‘education must
logically equip children to make these choices before it equips them to carry them out.’40
Later in her paper she makes this point more fully:

Formerly, individuals were either educated or trained. As social divisions became slightly
more blurred, the vast mass of young people found themselves at the end of formal schooling
neither educated nor trained. The answer does not lie in replacing education by training for
all, but in acceptance that all young people require a general education which will open to
them as many options of an intellectual, aesthetic and moral kind as they are capable of
entertaining and society is able to support, followed by an appropriate period of generic
training—not in imitative and obsolescent motor skills, but in the appropriate fundamental
principles and general skills of particular technologies, whether industrial, commercial,
scientific or service. The more specific our skills the shorter their useful life.41

With perhaps some room for negotiation as to where the former ends and the latter begins,
few liberal educators would quarrel with that.

9.2.4 The belittling of knowledge and understanding

Knowledge and understanding, I have claimed, are proper terms for what a liberal education
is trying to develop in pupils. These, however, are the very characterizations belittled by
exponents of the economic utility model of education, in favour of characteristics like
‘skill’, largely of course because of the active and instrumental connotation of the latter as
compared with the apparent passivity of the former. Part of the technique of advocating the
utility model, whether used deliberately and consciously or not it is difficult to say, is to
give false, Aunt Sally, conceptions of knowledge and understanding: ‘able to understand
but not to act’, or ‘knowledge without skill has a long sad history’. This polarity supposes
there to be a kind of knowledge and understanding disconnected from action and purpose,
and therefore easily characterized as ‘useless’ with all the derogatory force of that word in
a mainly instrumental, acquisitive and materialistic society. I want to argue that the polarity
is a false one. Not only can you not have skills, properly speaking, without knowledge
and understanding, which seems to be grudgingly admitted by those who attack liberal
education, but it is also nonsense to suppose there to be any knowledge and understanding
that does not involve the appropriate exercise of skills. These skills may indeed be mental
rather than physical in some, though not all, cases; but then so mainly are the skills of
engineers, lawyers, doctors, politicians, business executives and other ‘practical men and
142â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
women’. The point is that to come to know and understand anything in the rich evidential
sense I have been arguing for is anything but a passive and purely recipient business. To
know and to understand in this sense is to be able to follow and to practise particular kinds
of investigative procedures, weigh evidence, make judgments and decide what to believe
and what not to believe; to decide how to see things and how not to see things. Being
able to explain things to oneself in this kind of a way, with attention to consistency and
coherence, is the first step to being able to explain them to others. Seen like this it is not at
all surprising that the leaders of industry and commerce and their related services usually
come from those who have had a rich liberal education, rather than from those who at an
early age have been cut off from such an education and directed into narrow vocationalism
emphasizing mainly motor skills.
The first complaint, then, against the attempted belittling of knowledge and understanding,
is that these ideas are wrongly characterized. The decision-making that is so valued by the
exponents of the utility model and by the ‘capability’ proponents is in fact both a necessary
part of knowledge and understanding and would be pure unguided will without them.
The second complaint, also following directly from arguments made earlier in this
work, is that only knowledge and understanding on a wide base can liberate a peson
from the particular restrictions of birth, social class and geography. Without such a base
any choices are bound to be restricted because of the limited perspective brought to bear
on them. To think that choices of career or life-style can be made solely on the basis of
necessarily limited work experience, factory visits and similar experiences to be found in
careers education courses, is clearly wrong. The number of places visited, the types of work
experienced, the life-styles sampled, would need to be enormous for the choices to be made
on ‘that basis. The supposition that the evidence on which choices are made becomes more
‘real’ because of this kind of experience is a fallacy which might be dubbed the ‘concrete
fallacy’. Having a broken leg, being stuck in a front-line trench or being unemployed are
not necessarily the best ways of gaining any extensive understanding of bone injury, war or
unemployment; neither is working on a conveyor belt, learning to use a lathe or to prepare
hotel meals the best way of getting an understanding of the so-called ‘world of work’. The
direct experience may well be sharp and penetrating, but because it is necessarily of such
a limited aspect of what is to be understood its very force becomes a handicap rather than
an asset. The emotive impact of an experience is no necessary measure of its contribution
to understanding. The very detachment, lack of passion, and abstractness of much of the
knowledge and understanding handled in a liberally educative way, which it is now so
fashionable to attack, are essentials of a balanced, wide and liberating understanding.
A third complaint against the diminution of the extent of knowledge and understanding
in a compulsory education, and its replacement by cruder training elements, is that such
diminution reduces the liberating influence of education by reducing the pupil’s opportunity
to develop a critical framework of thinking. To be capable of critically viewing one’s own
position, one’s own perspective, the demands being made upon one and the opportunities
provided or not provided, it is necessary to be able to make comparisons and contrasts
against a wide background of actual, possible and imaginable different conceptions of
things and of how things might be. This kind of comparative complex is only to be gained
by a reasonably extensive study of human practices as delineated in Section 7.6.1. These
practices included those that manifested themselves in economic, commercial and industrial
 The challenge of economic utilityâ•… 143
institutions, and in art, craft and design; and the point was made that understanding these
practices would necessarily involve some active participation, but that such participatory
activities were to be directed to the end of understanding the practices and not towards
training for a future in them. For example, I claimed that a pupil engaged in art at a school
of general and liberal education is studying and practising with a different purpose from
that of a student in an art school. In a school of liberal education we are not trying to
produce an artist, but a human being who has some understanding of the arts as a great
and pervasive human practice. I should add here that another characteristic of the place
of art, or anything else, in a liberal education is that the particular practice is to be seen
in the light of, and as shedding light on, all the other practices studied. What R.S.Peters
called ‘cognitive perspective’ is an important aim of liberal education but does not seem
to figure very largely in the economic utility model of education. To foreclose too soon
on this process of a widening of cognitive perspective through an individual’s growth of
knowledge and understanding is to limit the growth of critical power which is a necessary
part of individual autonomy.
It is perhaps wrong to claim that exponents of vocational training or emphasis within the
period of compulsory education are deliberately seeking to curb critical power and attitude,
though the references to MSC course censorship already made would lend weight to such
a claim. Nevertheless, the result is the same whether deliberate or not, whether wished
for or not. Those who seek to devalue knowledge and understanding, as compared with
training, and those who seek to reduce the time involved in school concern for knowledge
and understanding as against training, are devaluing the concern for developing the rational
autonomy of the pupil which constitutes the main justification for compelling children to
be in school at all.

9.3 Conclusion
In this chapter I have given a sketch and a criticism of what is perhaps the most overt
and immediately pressing challenge which faces the view of liberal education that I have
outlined in earlier chapters. What I have sketched here is also, of course, an attack on
the education system as it stands in this country today. It is important not to be confused
here, since an attempt to develop a genuine liberal education for all pupils up to at least
the age of sixteen would also be an attack on the system as it exists today. To defend my
view of liberal education against alternative conceptions giving emphasis to training and to
vocational preparation is not to defend the present system. Conversely, arguments pointing
to defects in the present system, in schools as they actually exist today, and they are many,
are not necessarily arguments against the view of liberal education presented here. I happen
to believe that a good deal of what goes on in our schools is liberally educating; but not
enough of it is. There is not enough concern for evidential teaching and teaching for
understanding; there is far too early a narrowing of curriculum spread; there is too much
concern for relating the curriculum to career choice and there is too much emphasis on
competition and not enough on collaboration. An exponent of the economic utility model of
education that I have tried to characterize and criticize would no doubt turn these criticisms
of the status quo on their head, claiming there to be too much concern about understanding
and not enough concern about the ‘realities’ of competition, careers and the creation of
144â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
wealth. Neither of us totally approves of the present system, but we would improve things
in totally opposed ways. The debate is a real one.
At this historical moment (late 1983) there is little doubt that the economic utility
model, supported by the government and the Manpower Services Commission as well as
by powerful agencies of industry and commerce, is winning the power struggle if not the
debate. The reason it is winning is mainly to do with the strength and alignment of political
forces, but a powerful subsidiary factor is the failure of professional educators to first
articulate, and then defend, a coherent view of liberal education.
There are those who would say that what is happening is no more than forces already
and always at work in a capitalist democratic society becoming open about what they are
always trying to do. The liberal education I am advocating would never stand a chance,
these critics would say, because it could not be divorced from the productive and social
relationships obtaining in a capitalist society. These critics raise profound problems about
the relativity of knowledge, and about the relationship between knowledge and ideology,
and to these difficult questions we must now turn.
 10
The challenge of relativism, ideology
and the state

10.1 Introduction
In this chapter I shall consider some challenges to my view of liberal education that group
themselves around the idea of the relativity of knowledge and its relationship to political,
social and economic interests. This is to consider arguments at once more complex than,
and different in kind from, those considered in the previous chapter. Those people holding
what I there called the economic utility view of education do not set out to challenge the
taken-for-granted view of knowledge. They hold the same view of knowledge as most other
people but suppose, quite overtly, that some knowledge, especially technological knowledge
characterized in terms of skills, is much more useful than other more abstract knowledge
and understanding, and ought to be the main consideration in schools. The challenge of
those I shall now refer to as ‘relativists’ is more profound in that all knowledge is presented
by them, to a greater or lesser degree, as arbitrary systems of meaning, and opposed to
absolute and objectivist views of knowledge which they suppose to characterize the way
knowledge is presented to and received by pupils in schools. To this extent the challenge
is an epistemological one about the nature of knowledge, and can be met, at least in some
measure, by reminders about how I have characterized knowledge and understanding
earlier in this work. The challenge of the relativists is more complex even than these
epistemological differences and hypothetical characterizations of knowledge, because
grafted onto the relativistic epistemology is a theory, or a body of alternative theories,
seeking to account for the dominance and institutionalization of certain systematizations of
meaning, albeit arbitrary and problematic, by socio-economic or political explanations of
the dominance of social or political groups.
As if this was not already difficult enough there is a third powerful layer of consideration
to weave into the challenge. This is the concept of ideology, with its attendant problems of
whether ideologies are consciously or unconsciously manifested; whether ideologies can
be recognized as such and resisted; and how ideologies arise, are maintained and how they
might be distinguished, if at all, from knowledge.
Within the challenge of relativism we thus have three vast territories of thought
contributing: a specific view of epistemology, though not without variant; a sociology of
knowledge, sometimes offered as neutral analysis, but often with a prescriptive purpose
like the favouring of ‘open’ or ‘integrated’ curricula; and a view of the relationship between
education and ideology. Each of these topics has generated a literature of its own, and this
makes it a daunting task to consider the entire nexus in one chapter. Yet to ignore such a
powerful challenge would leave a very large gap in what is supposed to be a general theory
146â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
of liberal education. A sketch of this challenge, with some suggestions as to how it might be
answered in a way which leaves the general theory intact, must therefore be attempted.

10.2 Epistemological relativism

In this and the next sub-section I shall be referring extensively to papers in the collection
‘Knowledge and Control’, published as an Open University set book in 1971.1 This work
attempted to change the direction of sociology of education from its erstwhile focus on
the relationship between social class and access to education, and on education as an
agency of social mobility. The ‘new sociology of education’2 was to concern itself more
with the curriculum and the knowledge handled within the school system, especially in
terms of the ‘legitimation’ of this knowledge—that is to say, the way in which certain
kinds of knowledge are considered worthy of transmission in schools and others not. The
technique used was to consider all knowledge, pedagogical arrangements and methods as
‘problematic’. To consider something problematic is the opposite of taking it for granted,
as absolute or simply as given. To approach, say, the teaching of science as problematic
is to consider both scientific knowledge and the teaching of it as questionable. This is to
claim not only that science need not be taught, but that there is no absolute necessity to
view the world scientifically. The same can be said, of course, about any kind of knowledge
that happens to feature in schooling, science being mentioned here only as an example.
If school knowledge is viewed as problematic in this way, then explanations of a
sociological kind can be sought both as to the mechanism of knowledge legitimation and,
more specifically, why certain kinds of knowledge and pedagogical styles or methodologies
become dominant in certain socio-political environments at certain historical times.
Explanations can also be sought for paradigmatic shifts in curriculum content and practice
analogical to the shifts in the framework of scientific understanding claimed by Kuhn.3
There is much concern in ‘Knowledge and Control’, especially in papers by Bernstein4 and
Esland5, about shifts from a strictly subject-based curriculum to an integrated curriculum of
the kind much under discussion in the late 1960s and into the 1970s, and interesting things
are said about both the possible causes and likely effects of such a shift.
In so far as all this is in the style of neutral sociological analysis it does not in itself
constitute a challenge to my ideas of liberal education. After all, there is a sociological
account to be given of, say, why certain ideas of an educational kind get established or do
not get established at a certain time, which stands quite apart from accounts of whether
the ideas are coherent, consistent and justifiable or not. In this sense a sociologist would
be proceeding as if knowledge and pedgagogy were problematic because the question of
justification was simply not relevant to his proper enquiries. There would be some sense in
this since the justification of a practice is never a sufficient explanation of the presence of a
practice, any more than the presence of a practice is sufficient evidence of its justifiability.
When discussing beliefs earlier I made the point, following Quinton, that the strength with
which a belief is held has no necessary connection with the justification of the belief. There
are always psychological and sociological accounts that can be given of people’s beliefs.
There are also questions as to the justification of beliefs and these are separate from the
psychological and sociological accounts, or so I shall claim.
 The challenge of relativism, ideology and the stateâ•… 147
The writers of the papers in ‘Knowledge and Control’, however, would not accept this
distinction, for to talk of justification in the way I am doing supposes there to be what they
would call ‘absolutes’—that is, certain categories of logic, reason and argument by which
issues of justification are to be decided, and absolutes are to be denied because their use is
also problematic.
Now this is a much more serious, much more prescriptive, and much less purely a
sociological matter. The ‘as if’ technique, a matter of characterizing sociological procedure,
has now become an epistemological assertion about the total relativity, the total social
construction of all knowledge, especially as treated in schools. The treatment of the
problematic nature of knowledge is not always clear in the papers. Sometimes it does seem
as though the ‘as if’ style is being adopted:

If the sociologist is able to suspend, in his enquiry, the taken for granted moral and intellectual
absolutism of the teacher, who in his everyday situation has no such alternative, then the
phenomena of the classroom and the school can be studied for what they might mean to the
participants; such distinctions, then, as right or wrong, strict or slack, interesting or dull,
which might be used by either teacher or taught, become phenomena to be explained.6

At other times, however, the prescriptive tone appears, as here where Michael Young
is making the point that philosophers of education, like Hirst and White, have tried to
criticize certain curriculum developments like topic-based work and special ‘Newsom’
courses on the grounds that they fail to provide a proper education in terms of the forms
of knowledge:

The problem with this kind of critique is that it appears to be based on an absolutist
conception of a set of distinct forms of knowledge which correspond closely to the
traditional areas of the academic curriculum and thus justify, rather than examine, what are
no more than the socio-historical constructs of a particular time…. The point I wish to make
here is that unless such necessary distinctions or intrinsic logics are treated as problematic,
philosophical criticism cannot examine the assumptions of academic curricula.7

The argument here seems to be that absolutist conceptions of knowledge are to be considered
bad or unhelpful because they do not help us to ‘examine’ the assumptions of the academic
curricula. There is a number of things wrong with this passage, but let us simply note the
prescriptive argument for the moment.
Geoffrey Esland is much more clearly prescriptive. He sets up what he believes to
be the presently dominant characteristics of ‘knowledge’ and then claims that sociology
of knowledge has challenged the epistemological sufficiency of such an account. The
characterization must be given at length because of the many assertions within it. The
quotation gives both the message and the assertive style:

Knowledge is usually considered and referred to as a set of abstract structures with intrinsic
natures—as particular classifications of problems, data and verification procedures
conforming to assumed patterns of coherence. Thus the naming which confirms the
separation between zones of knowledge in a curriculum—called ‘subjects’ or ‘projects’—is
thought to represent certain ontologies, essences of human experience. In other words, it
148â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
is assumed that zones of knowledge are objects which can be considered to have meaning
other than in the minds of the individuals in which they are constituted, irrespective of their
human realization.
This is the objectivist view of knowledge. It is the view represented in the traditional
epistemology and analytic philosophy. It is also how knowledge is conceived in the
reality of everyday experience where the taken for granted nature of the world is rarely
questioned…. Knowledge is thereby detached from the human subjectivity in which it is
constituted, maintained and transformed. Such a view implicitly presents man as a passive
receiver, as a pliable, socialized embodiment of external facticities. He is represented not
as a world-producer, but as world-produced. We have, therefore, a reified philosophy
in which objectivity is autonomized and which does not regard as problematical for the
constituency of the object its constitution in the subjective experience of individuals.8

The particular sociology of knowledge that Esland believes challenges the ‘epistemological
sufficiency’ of this account of knowledge derives in part from Hegel and early Marx
but also from more recent writers like Schutz, Husserl and Schleger in the tradition of
phenomenology, and more recently still from the works of Berger and Luckman,9 C.Wright
Mills10 and Kuhn11. Although there is some feeling of all these writers being treated as
grist to Esland’s particular mill, it is no doubt true that they are all talking about the social
construction of knowledge in one way or another. There are, however, weak and strong
theses about the social construction of knowledge and reality, as I shall try to show later.
Esland characterizes his view like this:

The essential feature of this tradition…is that human sociation is a dialectic phenomenon.
Man externalizes himself through physical and mental activity in the process of
objectivation. The products which he has created then become his subjective world, a
reality which confronts him and is available to the definitions of others. This is subjectively
appropriated, and the objective structures are transformed into subjective consciousness.
The interpretative architecture of the mind is at once an active and a passive agent in the
construction of meaning and significance…. The individual biography is, therefore, both a
subjective and an institutionalized history of the self: the one acts on the other.
Because this view emphasizes man’s active construction of experience, there is a
clear challenge to the static, analytic conception of knowledge…. The focus, therefore,
is now diverted from how man absorbs knowledge so that he can replicate it to how the
individual creatively synthesizes and generates knowledge, and what are its social origins
and consequences.12

These characterizations, contrasted here by Esland, constitute the epistemological basis

for much of the argument in ‘Knowledge and Control’ and are to that extent important.
We must be clear, however, as to what is being argued or asserted. This is not simply an
‘as if’ technique. Esland is not saying, ‘Let us look at this problem of knowledge through
two different hypothetical models, the objectivist model and the sociology of knowledge
model, and see what is illuminated.’ He is asserting, as far as I can see, a number of direct
propositions as true, but not actually arguing for or demonstrating their truth. These
propositions—the main ones at least—are:
 The challenge of relativism, ideology and the stateâ•… 149
(i) Knowledge is usually construed as objectivist in the manner described.
(ii) This view of knowledge dominates traditional epistemology and analytic philosophy.
(iii) This view is ‘firmly embedded in the norms and rituals of academic culture and its
transmission’.
(iv) The objectivist view of knowledge, as described, is a wrong view.
(v) A more correct view is the social phenomenological, or sociology of knowledge, view
as described.
(vi) Only this view will enable us to make correct critiques of educational arrangements
and practices.
(vii) Education based on the phenomenological view of knowledge would be a better, more
humanizing, more liberating education.
To move to a criticism of this view, I believe only proposition (iv) to be wholly true.
There is some truth in proposition (iii), especially as ‘firmly embedded’ leaves us room to
suppose that other versions have some room to grow in the system as well. Similarly, there
is some truth in proposition (v) in the sense that the phenomenological view contains some
useful insights and emphases on the nature of knowledge. It does not, however, contain the
whole truth in this polarized way. Propositions (i), (ii), (vi) and (vii) I believe to be false.
I shall make some brief comments on these claims before going on to consider how this all
bears on the theory of liberal education.
(i) Knowledge is not usually construed as objectivist in the manner described. An
objectivist view might be said to dominate a simplistic view of scientific knowledge and a
good deal of everyday knowledge about the physical world where, incidentally, it seems to
serve our pragmatic purposes quite well. People have different views, however, about other
types of knowledge—knowledge of persons, morality, historical knowledge, aesthetic
knowledge and values generally are widely held to have either cultural or individually
relativistic elements and subjective dimensions.
(ii) The objectivist view of knowledge, as described, does not dominate traditional
epistemology or analytic philosophy. Within those traditions the issues of relativity and
subjectivity continue to be debated.13 I know of no philosopher, of education or otherwise,
who believes that the naming of subjects in the curriculum, or even Hirstian forms of
knowledge, represents ‘certain ontologies’ or ‘essences of human experience’. About
subjects, nothing of an epistemological, metaphysical or ontological kind has ever seriously
been claimed by anybody. What has been claimed about a form of knowledge is that it is ‘a
distinct way in which our experience becomes structured around the use of accepted public
symbols.’14 There is nothing ontological or essentialist about such a claim. Indeed, Hirst
sees himself as specifically rejecting ‘the doctrines of metaphysical and epistemological
realism with which it (liberal education) has been historically associated’.15 Similarly,
I know of no philosopher, of education or otherwise, who believes that ‘zones of knowledge
are objects which can be considered to have meaning other than in the minds of the
individuals in which they are constituted’. That both meaning and knowledge are features
of minds is widely acknowledged and certainly not an exclusive discovery of the sociology
of knowledge. Certainly many people would accept something like Popper’s World Three,
in which knowledge is objectified in the coding of material substrates and theoretical
systems16, but this is a necessary feature of the social nature of knowledge whereby the
150â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
products of individual minds become available for sharing with other individual minds.
Without contributors and users World Three could not exist as knowledge. Many people,
dialectical and other materialists among them, believe intuitively in some stuff or matter or
‘things in themselves’ existing in some sense apart from our knowledge of it or them, but
this must not be confused with what they suppose knowledge to be.
(iii) There is some truth in proposition (iii). It is true in the sense that many teachers do
treat knowledge in the dead dogma way that I have described in Chapter 5. That is to say,
they consider that they have truths to dispense to pupils and do this in a way that does not
involve pupils in the appropriate evidence held to justify the beliefs they are transmitting.
This has the effect of making the pupils view knowledge in something like Esland’s objective
sense: external collections of verities to be released by teachers who are the custodians and
gatekeepers, the selectors and legitimators. Active pupil engagement and understanding
are belittled in favour of passive reception, mystification and consequent alienation or
uncritical acceptance of received doctrine. That all this happens is, I believe, true. It
does not, however, happen all the time with all teachers or with all pupils. Some teachers
try actively to teach evidentially, probably more now than used to. Many new teaching
syllabuses and schemes devised by Schools Council groups and others are constructed with
evidential teaching in mind, and the training of teachers in recent years is more likely to
make them realize the need for this kind of teaching. Some pupils, too, even when taught
in a dead dogma, non-evidential fashion, nevertheless develop a critical awareness of the
part they can play in the development of their own knowledge. I suspect that this is partly
because the very content of some school subjects, and the competencies involved in them,
develop a resistance to dogmatic limitation. You cannot teach a child to read, for example,
encourage her to read novels and plays, and then expect her awareness to be confined only
to the texts specifically given. You cannot teach mathematics and science, even badly, and
then guarantee that no concern for evidence and proof will be engendered, perhaps to turn
against the very system itself. If there is no mechanism or dynamic like this operating there
is a difficult explanatory task in showing how a dogmatic education system produces as
many critical thinkers as it undoubtedly does. Of course much education goes on outside
the system, but to suppose that critical power is only generated outside the system, whilst
passive acceptance is all that is generated within it, would be grossly to oversimplify.
(iv) The objectivist view of knowledge, as described by Esland, is a wrong view of
knowledge indeed; but, as I have tried to show, it would be very difficult to find anybody
who subscribes to it. What is wrong in the characterization of knowledge given by Esland is
firstly the ontological and essentialist account of the suggested sub-divisions of knowledge,
especially if these are supposed to be indicated in the naming of school subjects; and,
secondly, the externalization of knowledge as object outside human minds. The view of
knowledge that does have wide adherence, though admittedly with many variations, among
modern philosophers in the analytic tradition is that knowledge is justified true belief: that
is to say, a claim to know must involve a belief that is held to be true because of the grounds,
evidence or warrant offered for its support.17 I have discussed this conception of knowledge
properly so called in 5.3.3 and cast some doubt on the truth condition in 5.4, and I shall not
recapitulate the accounts given there. The present point is simply that whilst Esland is right
in rejecting the view of objectivist knowledge that he sets up, this does not help us very
much because his attack does not engage with modern mainstream epistemology.
 The challenge of relativism, ideology and the stateâ•… 151
(v) The social phenomenological, or sociology of knowledge, view of knowledge as
described by Esland is by no means unilluminating. It casts a good deal of light on matters
affecting the knowledge and beliefs people come to have and the way in which such
knowledge and belief is held or entertained. It provides, properly, a phenomenology and a
sociology, even in some of its forms an anthropology, of knowledge. It overreaches itself,
however, in claiming to provide a superior epistemology. It cannot do that because it does
not provide an epistemology at all. In particular the view described gives no account of
how we might distinguish between those beliefs justifiable enough to count as knowledge
and those beliefs not so justifiable, or any other account of what it is that makes some
beliefs knowledge and others not. Surely these are the central epistemological questions?
It might be argued, though it is not done so clearly in the work being discussed, that the
whole point of the phenomenological account is not to distinguish between beliefs that are
knowledge and beliefs that are not. On this view there would simply be beliefs, interesting
problems about their origins, developments and consequences but no concern about their
justification unless it was a matter of the alignment of certain beliefs with certain political
commitments: e.g. certain beliefs facilitate exploitation of the working class and certain
other beliefs facilitate the liberation of such a class. This view would be incoherent since it
leaves no justification for considering the exploitation of the working class to be bad. There
would have to be some justifiable beliefs of an ethical or other kind to make this possible,
which is perhaps why some of the Marxists to be considered later do want a distinction to
be drawn between ideology on the one hand and knowledge or science on the other.
(vi) The problem of justification enters, too, into questions of what particular stance
enables us to best examine and criticize existing institutional systems like schools. Hirst’s
views, as I showed in a quotation above, were seen as inadequate for a base from which
critical examination of certain curriculum proposals could be made. Surely the reverse is
true. No examination based on the problematicalness of everything can yield a criticism of
anything, if by criticism we mean showing some proposals or practices to be bad compared
with others considered to be more desirable. In order to prescribe—that is, in order to say that
what is going on in education should change, or be defended from change, in any particular
respect—there must be some appeal to justificatory argument and evidence that is, if not
absolute, at least a widely enough agreed set of assumptions or long-lasting conventions
for meaningful argument to take place between conflicting views. Some criteria, some
points of reference, must be considered at least for the time being as non-problematic.
Young appears to be saying that only if we dispense with all such absolute or near-absolute
presuppositions can we critically examine the assumptions of academic curricula. Perhaps
he only means that the existing curriculum divisions in certain types of school should not
be taken as given; but if that is what he means we all agree, and to suppose that Hirst was
taking such divisions as given is simply (but seriously) a misunderstanding.
It is worth making a few comments on the general idea of the social construction of
knowledge and what is called the social construction of reality. I said earlier that there
were weak and strong theses in this area of speculation. The weak thesis, undenied as far
as I know by anybody other than those of certain religious views attributing all knowledge
to God, is that without minds and without social interaction of minds there would be no
knowledge. An elaboration of this idea is the thought that if all minds vanished from the
world then knowledge and understanding would vanish as well because these are properties
152â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
of minds now vanished. The materials left behind in the form of books, micro-fiche, films,
tapes, records and computer programmes would not in themselves constitute knowledge,
being simply artefacts awaiting the decoding of minds.
Building upon this simple, but profoundly true and widely agreed base, many much
more controversial extensions have been claimed. Some are to do with how human beings
come to have this knowledge. The part played by language, itself a property of mind and
society, has been widely discussed in relation to thought and understanding.18 Marxists
have tended to emphasize the part played by human labour and the social relationships
attendant upon it. Much of the consideration arises from different views on the materialist
presupposition that there is some matter or stuff, a real existing universe, to be known
and understood in some sense. Kant’s claim that knowledge and understanding were of
phenomena and not of any stuff or matter or ‘thing in itself’, whilst making plain the
separation between whatever might actually exist on the one hand and knowledge of it on
the other, also paved the way for much stronger idealist views about the nature, not just of
knowledge, but of reality. An extreme idealist view would be that the only ‘reality’ lies in
the knowledge and understanding within minds, thus doubting, discounting or even ruling
out altogether the materialist presupposition.19
Intermixed with these complicated and contentious debates about the relationship
between knowledge and ‘reality’, which bears particularly on the nature and possibility of
scientific knowledge of the physical world, are other traditions inquiring into the nature
of our knowledge of persons and of personal and social relationships, and extending
into our knowledge and characterization of ethical, political and economic knowledge.
In this area, of course, theorists have been on a much safer ground in pointing out the
generally conventional and problematic nature of such knowledge and understandings.
It is much more difficult to claim any social ‘reality’ that is anything more than what is
temporally and locationally supposed to be the ‘reality’, when what we are talking about
is social conventions and relationships which demonstrably have historically changing
characteristics. Even in this area, however, we have debate as to whether the problematic
and conventional nature of social knowledge means that the ideas of the politically, socially
or economically powerful necessarily hold sway; or whether even within these ideas there
is room for holding that some ideas are more justifiable, as distinct from being held by the
powerful, than others.
Some recent sociologists and social philosophers have concentrated on explaining the
nature of everyday knowledge, described by Schutz as:

the reality which seems self-evident to men remaining within the natural attitude. This
reality is the everyday life world. It is the province of reality in which man continuously
participates in ways which are at once inevitable and patterned…. Only in the world of
everyday life can a common, communicative, surrounding world be constituted. The world
of everyday life is consequently man’s fundamental and paramount reality.20

The reminder that the level at which we share most with our fellows is at the level of
everyday assumptions is an illuminating reminder, especially perhaps for academics of
all persuasions; but the everyday life world is also changed and penetrated by second-
order attempts to characterize and understand it, just as the everyday characterizations of
 The challenge of relativism, ideology and the stateâ•… 153
personhood have become changed by the oversimplified downward penetration of ideas
from people like, for example, Freud, Sartre and D.H.Lawrence. The problem, as always,
is to determine the bearing of all these kinds of enquiry on the practical and theoretical
questions of what to do and what to believe, whether the questions, as here, are about what
to do and to believe about education, or about one’s own personal and social life.

10.3 Epistemological relativism and liberal education

I believe the theory of liberal education already laid out to be not greatly disturbed by
the relativistic challenge. This is partly due to the confused nature of the challenge and
partly to do with the characterization of the theory of liberal education itself. The theory
of liberal education argued in this work does not rest on the objectivist view of knowledge
set up by Esland, though it does assume that knowledge can be characterized in terms of
justifiable belief. The theory allows for the fact that what counts as justification in some
areas of inquiry will not be the same as in others and, in particular, it allows for the fact that
the status of some evidential reasoning, especially in the area of human practices, will be
among the things to be studied. In respect of methodology the theory argues specifically
against treating information and knowledge as simply given, as dead dogma, in favour of
teaching evidentially, even where this leads to recognizing the frailty of evidence offered in
support of some conventional and superstitious beliefs. All this imports into the theory of
liberal education some of the insights of the relativistic position—what is truly problematic
is to be seen as such, treated as such, and not offered as categoric knowledge.
On the other hand, the theory of liberal education offered here rests very much upon
assumptions regarding the necessary presupposition of justification, logic, rationality
and reason generally; together with all the principles and characteristics like consistency,
coherence, impartiality, sufficiency and necessity that are attendant upon, and indeed
constitutive of, the notion of reason; and together with such moral notions as can be
derived from such presuppositions. This avowed dependence is by implication a rejection
of the excessive relativism of ‘Knowledge and Control’, which would throw rationality
into the melting-pot along with everything else. Young argues that just as feudal, clerical
and market ideas were dogmas which have become questionable and thus replaced:

Today it is the commonsense conceptions of ‘the scientific’ and ‘the rational’, together
with the various social, political and educational beliefs that are assumed to follow from
them, that represent the dominant legitimizing categories. It therefore becomes the task of
sociological enquiry to treat these categories not as absolutes but as constructed realities
realized in particular institutional contexts.21

In case we might misunderstand what Young means here by ‘the rational’, he cites C.Wright
Mills with approval later on and makes the point clear;

Mills (1939) makes the significant point that what we call ‘reasoning’, ‘being logical’, or
validating the truth of an assertion, all involve a self-reflection or criticism of one’s own
thoughts in terms of various standardized models. These models will necessarily be sets of
shared meanings of ‘what good argument is, what is logical, valid etc….’ …like all shared
meanings they can be treated as problematic and become the objects of enquiry….the rules
154â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
of logic, whether practical or academic, are conventional, and will be shaped and selected
in accordance with the purpose of the discourse or the intentions of the enquiry.22

Young then goes on to note that if logic, good reasoning and justification are all to be treated
as problematic then shortcomings on the part of a pupil need no longer be considered as
‘wrong’, or ‘poorly argued’, but simply as deviance. In one sense there is no problem here
if all that is being said is that it might be more useful and revealing to an educator to look
at the causes of a pupil’s ‘deviance’ rather than to harp on the pupil’s wrongness or lack
of logic. But one cannot resist the feeling that much more than this is being said. Reason
and logic are being offered as part of the legitimating apparatus of the ruling power of
the dominant economic system, presumably monopoly capitalism. Similar arguments can
be found in Marcuse where ‘reason’ seems to be limited to an instrumental, means-end,
interpretation.23 It is this conception of the problematic nature of reason and rationality
and their associated cluster of concepts, principles and techniques that the theory of liberal
education rejects.
Of course logic and reason are conventions; of course they constitute shared systems
of meanings; of course they involve standardized models and of course they would not
exist without minds. Systems of logic are not immutable: Aristotle did not work out all the
possibilities of the propositional calculus; he did not envisage the complexities of symbolic
logic; nor did he see the controversies within modal logic that modern logicians concern
themselves with. Of course systems of logic, to some extent, can be shaped and selected
to suit different discourses and purposes. Having said all this, however, the status of logic
and reason as necessarily presupposed in serious discourse and serious enquiry remains.
Human beings do not have to engage in serious discourse or enquiry in any absolute sense,
whatever that might mean; though human life would be very different and the species
potential would be much more circumscribed if they did not. But if they do then reason and
logic are necessitated since without them it would be meaningless to talk about believing
or doing one thing being any better than believing or doing another. Writing books like
‘Knowledge and Control’ which seek to assert bodies of propositions as preferable to
other propositions that could be considered, would be quite pointless enterprises, as would
any kind of argument or discussion. When people claim this kind of necessity they are
not claiming reason and logic as objective physical presences which cannot be avoided,
but they are claiming the necessity of presupposing certain things (concepts, principles
or techniques) if we want to engage in certain other things (argument, discussion, proof,
justification). To say that you only need to subscribe to certain conventions, say passing
the after-dinner port and madeira in a certain direction, if you want to value certain high-
table society is true if trivial. To say that you only need to attend to reason and logic if you
want to have meaningful discourse and to engage seriously in justificatory questioning,
is not so clear since nobody could utter or entertain such a proposition unless they were
already committed to such discourse and such enquiry. That is to say: they could not utter
or entertain such a proposition meaningfully, or with any point, unless so committed; nor
could they have any way of indicating the truth of such an assertion without commitment
to accepted procedures of justification connected with reason and logic. The tu quoque
argument, in short, can always be turned upon anybody who tries to demonstrate or argue
 The challenge of relativism, ideology and the stateâ•… 155
the dispensability of reason: in order to make the case such a proponent must necessarily
presuppose not only the use of reason but its value.
The theory of liberal education rejects this extension of relativism to rationality itself.
Indeed, the arguments of the theory have all been in the other direction: that is to say, they
have started with the necessary presupposition of reason in asking justificatory questions
about education and have tried to work out the extensive implications of such necessary
presuppositions. If our most fundamental justificatory principles are not to be rooted in
the very necessities of justificatory enquiry it is difficult to see where else they might be
located. The point at issue here is an extremely important educational and political one. To
suppose, for example, that working-class youngsters need not engage too seriously in reason
and logic because these are merely the instruments and legitimations of those who exploit
them, would be seriously to betray working-class youngsters. If this became a seriously
prevalent view, instead of merely an academic one, then working-class youngsters could, as
it were, be betrayed from two sides: one side saying that a liberal education is not necessary
because it has no economic utility, and the other side saying that a liberal education is not
necessary because it is merely a body of capitalist legitimations. My argument is that liberal
education, properly understood, liberates precisely because of its dependence, in content
and method, on the only resource we have for arbitration between conflicting calls to belief
and action, namely our reason. Sociological accounts of the kind I have so far mentioned
go a long way in describing forces acting against the use and development of reason, just as
Freudian accounts attempt to explain different kinds of distortions and aberrations of such
development; but both go too far if they claim that there is nothing but an arbitrary area of
conflict in which all we can do is make blind and meaningless commitments.
In these two sections I have tried to deal with the challenge of what I have called
epistemological relativism on a front admittedly limited by my present purposes, and taking
the work of Esland and Young in ‘Knowledge and Control’ as reasonably clear exemplars
of such a challenge. Since the publication of ‘Knowledge and Control’ the challenge of
relativism has widened and much more has been written about the way in which social
forces affect the content and methodology of education. Much of this work has clustered
around the idea of ideology, and to this I must now turn in rather more detail.

10.4 Ideology
A great deal of sociological writing on education at the turn of the decade and into the
1980s is centred around the concept of ideology, and the discussion here is at once complex,
interesting and challenging to the ideas of liberal education I have outlined. The discussion
is complex for a number of reasons. There is, to start with, no immediate and authoritative
defmition of ‘ideology’ that can be given, part of the debate always being to do with what
ideology is and whether or not its illocutionary force is to be taken as pejorative or not.
A further complexity is that discussions of ideology are inevitably political, not least
because the concept is a key one for theorists in the Marxist tradition of political and
cultural analysis. It is therefore difficult to avoid being caught up in the many debates
within Marxism itself between humanistic, classical and neo-Marxists as to the nature of
ideology, its relation to the state, the ruling class and the working class, and the possibility
or impossibility of transcending the influence of dominant ideologies.
156â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
The discussion is interesting because, in my view, considerable light is thrown on
human belief and understanding, and educational attempts to facilitate the development
of these characteristics, by considering them in the context of ideology. Notions that have
concerned philosophers of education, like ‘indoctrination’, ‘justifiable beliefs’, ‘living
truths and dead dogmas’, ‘knowledge’ and ‘understanding’, which have already figured in
my account, have obvious connections with concepts like ideology and can only gain in
sharpness of characterization by being considered together with that concept.
For some writers education in a capitalist society is nothing more than the socialization
of pupils into the particular ideology of such a society. If this is an accurate description
of education in a capitalist society, then claims that liberal education was going on would
be mere pretensions; and claims that liberal education as I have characterized it could go
on would be countered by a demonstration of the dependence of prevailing ideologies on
the existing capitalist mode of production and the social relations necessarily entailed by
such a mode of production. On such a view a genuinely liberating education could only
follow the liberation from domination and oppression consequent upon the destruction
of the capitalist mode of production and its attendant social relations. In this way, certain
analyses of education in capitalist societies, involving the notion of ideology, constitute a
serious threat and challenge to ideas of the desirability and possibility of liberal education
spelled out earlier in this work, in that so far they seem to have ignored the forces of
ideology with which they have to contend.
It will be helpful, I think, to state my thesis on this before 1 go on to attempt its
demonstration and justification. This will at least help readers to see where I am heading
for through some admittedly confusing territory. I shall argue that ideology is a meaningful
and useful concept, and that the term does name a force acting in culture generally and in
education particularly. Further, I shall argue that it is also meaningful to talk of dominant
ideologies that are related to political and economic structures, as picked out in certain uses
of the concept of hegemony. On the other hand I shall claim that the distinction sometimes
drawn between science and ideology is confusing and leaves an epistemological gap to
do with the justification of other human practices than science. Finally, I shall claim that
ideologies, in so far as they are basically of limited rationality to those living them, can be
transcended by the necessity of seeking consistency, coherence and justification in one’s
life, and a liberal education, properly conceived, is the facilitator of this transcendence.
Liberation from the tyranny of the present and the particular is, in part, liberation from
ideology.
‘Ideology’ was originally a word connected with the study of ideas, and it retains that
connotation to some extent still. Most writers using the term today, however, use it to
name a framework not just of ideas but of actual practices, institutions, engagements and
interactions that embody ideas in some way. This wider connotation is important to keep in
mind, since it helps to establish the notion that ideologies are not just theoretical structures
or propositional frameworks but lived experiences in which the ‘bearers’ of the ideologies,
those living them, have no conscious awareness of bearing or living an ideology. A
sophistication of the idea of ideology is that an individuals own perception of self is created
within and by the ideology within which he lives, and that this is not entirely at the level of
reason, cognition and consistent awareness. Indeed, among some Marxists there has been a
 The challenge of relativism, ideology and the stateâ•… 157
revival of interest in Freudian ideas of the unconscious which attempt further explanation
of the penetration of ideologies below the level of conscious awareness.24
As characterized so far, of course, there could be any number of ideologies within which
different people live. Most of the views I wish to consider, however relate the idea of
ideology to political and economic structures. The idea here is that people live within a
dominant ideology generated by the relations of production in a mainly capitalist market
economy. It is not that such an ideology (incorporating ideas of ownership, management
and labour, the profit motive and rationale, the separation of public, private and political,
and so on) is conceived theoretically and accepted as dominant. It is rather that it becomes
dominant by being lived in as natural and inevitable, a characteristic as it were of human
nature. It is not that the features of such an ideology are not allowed by anyone to be
questioned, it is simply that for most people they are not even conceived of as questionable.
Yet, of course, the claim of Marxists and others is that such an ideology serves the interests
of those members of a capitalist society who rule that society by owning and controlling
the means of production, and therefore helps to perpetuate conditions of oppression and
exploitation of which the victims, in any full sense, are unaware. It is a further part of
this characterization that education constitutes one of the major (for some the major)
institutional apparatuses for involving each rising generation into the dominant ideology.
As Althusser puts it:

I believe I have good reasons for thinking that behind the scenes of its political Ideological
State Apparatus, which occupies the front of the stage, what the bourgeoisie has installed
as its number one, i.e. as its dominant ideological State apparatus, is the educational
apparatus, which has in fact replaced in its functions the previously dominant ideological
State apparatus, the Church.25

and, as one of the crudest exponents of the view puts it:

Education, then, in a capitalist liberal democracy, is a deliberately systematic process that

aims to get people to perceive the world in a certain way that favours the ruling class, while
at the same time having them believe that they are seeing the world ‘objectively’.26

Many Marxists would want to say that this last quotation makes the matter sound too
deliberate and conspiratorial. What the idea of ideology picks out is something far more
complex than mere propaganda. It is not the manipulation of ignorant pupils by skilled
servants of the ruling class, all knowing what they are about. It is rather that all are caught
up in the ideological framework: pupils, parents, teachers and even individual managers,
employers and members of the ruling classes themselves. The capitalist mode of production
itself, and the social relations it produces, necessitates a framework of thought and practice,
of assumptions and institutions that, whilst taken for granted, make the whole set-up
coherent and matter of fact. Althusser even describes how he believes the education system
provides adaptive perspectives of the ideology to fit subsequent roles in the capitalist mode
of production: some pupils being ‘ejected’ at about 16 years of age into ‘production’ as
workers, whilst others go on gaining different aspirations and attitudes and become:
158â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
small and middle technicians, white collar workers, small and middle executives, petty
bourgeois of all kinds. A last portion reaches the summit, either to fall into intellectual semi-
employment or to provide…the agents of exploitation (capitalists, managers), the agents
of repression (soldiers, policemen, politicians, administrators, etc.) and the professional
ideologists (priests of all sorts…),27

the point here being that all, not just the workers, are directed and role-determined in an
appropriate way by the ideology carried by the education system.
I am still at the stage of briefly characterizing the concept of ideology as it appears
in the literature, and anxious to convey the pervasiveness, the taken-for-grantedness, the
all-incorporating idea that the more sensitive Marxist writers have in mind, as well as the
dependence of the notion on the actually existing mode of production and its necessary
social relations. Of course we can still imagine a believer in the virtue of a free market
economy actually and overtly trying to match education to his ideas, as perhaps some of
the advocates of skill-based vocational training are doing, but this would not in itself be an
example of ideology at work. More controversially we may imagine a person coming to
understand the forces of ideology and resisting them. The extent to which this is possible,
or whether it would be just one ideology combating another, we have yet to consider. It
is the vast area of taken-for-granted, everyday lived experience—unquestioned, relatively
unexamined, yet relatively coherent and sense-making, not a mere illusion or fantasy, yet
not the truth or the whole truth—that is the domain of ideology; and school, it is claimed,
is the purveyor and reinforcer of it.
Now there seems little doubt to me that this idea, in its more carefully expressed
forms at least, conveys a good deal of truth. Schools as they actually exist in democratic
capitalist societies do convey, in a taken-for-granted way, much of the value-attitude-
thought structure that is conducive to the maintenance of such a society. They tend to
favour and institutionalize competition; they favour individual acquisition against other
individuals; they encourage conformity, often blind conformity, to authority; they relate
knowledge status to occupational hierarchy status; they screen in relation to a required
occupational hierarchy in a way not unlike that claimed by Althusser; and in spite of much
lip-service to the contrary their practices do not always appear to place much emphasis on
critical thought, either in teaching methods or in assessment. This is not an inclusive nor an
exhaustive list of what schools do, but I believe they do all these things. In so far as they do,
then the picture of schools as ideological apparatuses is not too difficult to draw.
Whether this, even if true, is to be seen as bad, is a further question. Marxist writers
vary; some, like Kevin Harris, manage to convey, if not actually to state, a picture of
undiluted capitalist wickedness!28 Others, perhaps Marx himself, and certainly Antonio
Gramsci, much more convey the idea of the necessities of certain stages of historical
development. On this view no wickedness is entailed whatsoever: it is simply the case
that certain modes of production will evolve certain sense-making ideologies and the
institutional apparatuses to further them. Interestingly, though, and strangely neglected in
some contemporary Marxist writing, it is also the case within classical Marxist theory, that
historial stages contain within themselves the very contradictions that will bring about their
transformation, and these contradictions can exist not only in the material productive base,
but in all that is superstructurally co-existent with that base—in other words within the
 The challenge of relativism, ideology and the stateâ•… 159
ideology itself. I shall explore the dialectic fruitfulness of that idea later. For the moment
there are two ways in which we could say that if schools are purveyors of ideology in the
way described then it is bad and they should not be. The first is political, and some Marxists
would agree with it. The second is educational and most Marxists, though perhaps not
Gramsci, would shudder at the separation!
The first argument, then, would say that the prevailing ideology is bad because it tends to
support the exploitation and oppression of the working class. I would make two comments
on this. The argument only works if you do believe the democratic capitalist society to be
exploitative and oppressive. For believers of this claim, and the Marxist theories of value
that underlie it, then ideology provides a ready answer for why most people fail to see that
they are exploited. If you do not accept the charge of exploitation, then what is being called
‘ideology’ could be seen as simply an appropriate inculcation of the young into the values,
attitudes and knowledge appropriate to their citizenship in a liberal democratic state—
which is exactly how some teachers do put it. My other comment is that if ideology is only
wrong because it facilitates the exploitation and oppression of the working class, it seems
to follow that an ideology that did not do that would be all right. Indeed, some writers have
seemed to indicate that teachers should encourage the ideology or culture of the working
class as a kind of counter-culture or counter-ideology. School then would be seen as a site
for conflicting ideologies to, as it were, battle it out for supremacy.29
The second argument for considering that ideology is bad is a different one and more
closely related to my conception of a liberal education. This argument would be that any
inculcation of values and beliefs which was not on a basis of reason and evidence, not
concerned with issues of justification, would be bad because it fails to respect the pupil as
an actual or potential rational agent. This argument, of course, supposes there to be beliefs
that are more justifiable than others, more objective than others, and that access to such
objective knowledge is possible even in the face of ideological pressure and mystification.
I must return to a discussion of this important possibility, but at the moment I am concerned
to maintain the meaningfulness of talking about ideology as mediated and reinforced by
schools, and the justification for assuming such mediation to be bad.
A further conceptual tool for discussing these notions is to be found in the idea of
hegemony. The notion of hegemony, as used in Marxist analysis, combines the idea of a
strong and pervasive ideology with that of class dominance. For Raymond Williams, for
example, hegemony is:

the central, effective and dominant system of meanings and values, which are not merely
abstract but which are organized and lived. That is why hegemony is not to be understood
at the level of mere opinion or mere manipulation. It is a whole body of practices and
expectations; our assignments of energy, our ordinary understandings of the nature of man
and of his world.30

and he is clear that: ‘The educational institutions are usually the main agencies of the
transmission of an effective dominant culture.’31 Williams is also concerned, however, to
emphasize the complexity, the pervasiveness, and what he calls the ‘selective tradition’, in
the operation of hegemony:
160â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
the way in which from a whole possible area of past and present certain meanings and
practices are chosen for emphasis, certain other meanings and practices are neglected and
excluded. Even more crucially, some of these meanings and practices are reinterpreted,
diluted, or even put into forms which support or at least do not contradict other elements
within the effective dominant culture.32

Like other writers Williams emphasizes the enormous penetrative power of hegemonic
ideology so conceived:

If what we learn…were merely an imposed ideology, or if it were only the isolable meanings
and practices of the ruling classes, or of a section of the ruling class, which gets imposed
on others, occupying only the tops of our minds, it would be—and one would be glad—a
very much easier thing to overthrow.33

Now such a force as is picked out in the notion of a hegemonic ideology, or what Williams
calls an effective dominant culture, certainly constitutes a challenge to liberal education as
a feasible possibility. Some Marxist writers appear to reject the liberal education possibility
out of hand—Kevin Harris, for example:

On the one hand there are fine ideals continually expressed by people who would sincerely
and seriously wish to see those ideals manifested in schools and other institutions. On
the other hand, there is the capitalist society which requires vast numbers of people to
undertake menial instrumental tasks (and to remain unaware of, and powerless to criticize,
their real relations in and to the world). Education, as an instrument of society, is thus
powerless to practise what it preaches, for it is characterized by the contradiction that it
cannot produce the products it theoretically desires and ostensibly strives for within the
society that it is charged with reproducing.34

Althusser even ‘asks the pardon’ of those teachers who he believes try to work against the
prevailing ideology:

They are a kind of hero. But they are rare and how many (the majority) do not even begin
to suspect the ‘work’ the system (which is bigger than they are and crushes them) forces
them to do, or worse, put all their heart and ingenuity in performing it with the most
advanced awareness (the famous new methods!). So little do they suspect it that their own
devotion contributes to the maintenance and nourishment of this ideological representation
of the School, which makes the School today as ‘natural’, indispensable—useful and even
beneficial for our contemporaries as the Church was ‘natural’, indispensable and generous
for our ancestors a few centuries ago.35

The challenge is thus clear. Since ideology operates below the level of any awareness that it
is an ideology, and because it is determined by the necessities of the mode of production in
a capitalist society, no education in such a society is likely to be liberal in the sense I have
been trying to describe and to justify, or so it would seem to follow.
There is another consideration to add to the power of a dominant ideology which has a
particularly topical force, and this has to do with the relationship between education and
 The challenge of relativism, ideology and the stateâ•… 161
the state. If state power is seen as basically an instrument of the ruling economic class,
as Marxists see it, then the rise of state education systems in the late nineteenth century
in liberal democratic capitalist states raises interesting explanatory problems. On the one
hand extensive, even universal and compulsory, education seemed to turn the coercive
power of the state against those who would exploit children by employing them for long
hours in factories, farms or mines. On the other hand, however, state provision of education
made it more possible for schooling to be part of the dominant ideology in two ways.
Firstly, by making ostensibly less necessary, and in some cases impossible, the distinctively
working-class provision of education in institutions like the socialist Sunday schools—the
providers of an alternative vision.36 In other words the occasion for a class-based working-
class education diminished as state-provided education increased. Secondly, of course,
the provision of state education made more possible the direct state influence on the
type of provision and on curriculum content. It thus becomes possible to argue as Rachel
Sharp does:

Although running the risk of overgeneralization the thesis seems plausible that in the course
of the nineteenth century the ruling class gained effective control over a crucial instrument
for establishing its dominance: the form and content of schooling. This process facilitated
therefore, the increasing management of knowledge in the service of the technical problems
generated by the accumulation process and the requirements of maintaining hegemony….
Education for most no longer involves the transfer of sweetness and light, the initiation of
the young into a broad and general humanistic curriculum….the emphasis is on training
pupils in those specific instrumental skills required by a differentiated workforce through
a range of practical ideologies which serve to reinforce and legitimize the social relations
of production.37

Similarly, but more generally, Nicos Poulantzas refers to ‘the capitalist state’s take-over
of education and its regimentation of the culture domain in general’.38 There appears to
be some confusion here between what a particular government might advocate and seek
to advance as a matter of overt policy—the kind of thing we considered in the previous
chapter—and the generally prevailing ethos in which what the state does seems to be in the
service of a generally accepted consensus about how things should be. The power of the
state is great in either case; but it is more insidious, and more truly ideological, in the latter.
Whether state power can be used to advance a truly liberal education system, even in a
society still correctly described as capitalist, most Marxists would seem to seriously doubt.
Not all of them, though, and I shall return to this debate in my critical section.
Marxist writers, in their complex but illuminating analysis, make use of another notion
which we must consider at least briefly before turning to a criticism of their case and
a defence of the liberal education ideal against it; this is the notion of incorporation.
The idea of incorporation picks out the characteristic of a hegemonic ideology to absorb
into itself ideas which initially seem to be threats or challenges to it. For example, ideas
constituent of liberal democracy, like individual freedom, equality, universal suffrage,
freely elected legislatures and responsible cabinet government are, it is alleged, absorbed
and metamorphosed into the dominant ideology without altering the basic social relations
attendant upon capitalist modes of production. Freedom comes to refer to certain
162â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
freedoms necessary for capitalist production and the operation of the market; equality
comes to refer to equality ‘before the law’ but not to actual equality in terms of wealth,
or it becomes changed into equality of opportunity rather than actual equality; and the
conditions of elections require political parties to constrain their programme proposals
within the dominant ideology because of the necessity to win votes. The actual ability
of liberal democracy to effect change, therefore, is limited to the change that is possible
within the parameters established by the capitalist mode of production, change beyond
these parameters being seen as ‘revolutionary’ and destructive of ‘society itself’. To the
extent that incorporative strategies successfully enable the hegemonic ideology to embrace
change whilst still leaving economically determined social relations relatively untouched,
to that extent there is little need for the full coercive power of the state to be used. As in
so many other aspects of ideology an important agency of incorporation is held to be the
school, not only in the reinforcement given to the assumptions of liberal democracy, but
also the instrumental assumptions built into curricular structure and practice:

ways in which the curriculum field supports the widespread interests in technical control
of human activity, in rationalizing, manipulating, ‘incorporating’, and bureaucratizing
individual and collective action, and in eliminating personal style and political diversity.39

It would be a mistake, however, to imagine that incorporation, and other phenomena

discussed above, succeed in creating a monolithic and uni-directional dominant ideology.
Force can be great, indeed mighty, while still falling short of being absolute—and that is
important. Much of the incorporation enables a number of contradictory and alternative
positions to operate and be tolerated, as in the case of parliamentary politics, as Raymond
Williams points out. Importantly, too, Williams reminds us that not all residues of previous
cultures, not all aspects of what he calls emergent forms, are incorporated into the dominant
culture.40 Both of these perceptions can serve us in criticism, to which I shall now turn.

10.5 Ideology and liberal education

In turning to a criticism of ideology seen as a challenge to liberal education it is important
to make, and to bear in mind, some significant distinctions. The first distinctions to make
concern what is under challenge. The first possibility here is that it is education and schooling
as it is at present to be found in western capitalist societies that is actually challenged by a
characterization of ideology. Kevin Harris is a clear exponent of this view, though not the
only one, when he speaks of the overt assertion of liberal and civilizing aims of educators
in capitalist states who fail to see that their aims are not, and cannot be, realized because
of the dominant ideology within which they work. Since I am not claiming that schools
at present operate a curriculum or practise the methods of liberal education as outlined
earlier in this work, I am not concerned to defend present practice, though I do believe the
claims of Harris, as similarly the claims of Althusser, to be somewhat exaggerated if they
are to be considered as empirical claims. I also believe, however, that present practice falls
considerably short of the ideals of a liberal education that I have tried to spell out, and that
part of the cause of this is pressure from a dominant ideology. There is a strong, though
far from perfect, match between the ethos of schools and the ethos of capitalist market
economies, as I indicated earlier; there are powerful pressures, some covert but some quite
 The challenge of relativism, ideology and the stateâ•… 163
overt, to make this match even more marked; and there is a professional failure to articulate
a clear conception of liberal education which can be defended against these pressures.
The challenge of ideology is not only directed against liberal education as a name for
present practice. The challenge is also clearly one to the ideas of this work. But even here
a distinction must be made, for there can be both a hard challenge and a softer challenge
addressed to two different objects.
The hard challenge is addressed to the very conception of a liberal education as here
expounded. It involves the assertion of the complete impossibility of escaping from or
transcending ideology and, in particular, of escaping from or transcending the dominant
ideology. I call this challenge the hard challenge because it is of the nature of a logical
challenge, though this is never quite clear, it being the logical impossibility of transcending
ideology that appears to be asserted. I shall deal very briefly with the hard challenge for
two reasons. Firstly, it is not very clear whether anyone actually makes the challenge in
quite this form: even Kevin Harris, who comes quite near to it, usually falls somewhat short
of making the claim a purely logical and theoretical one. Secondly, as a logical claim the
rebuttal seems to me fairly obvious. Nevertheless it is important to consider the possible
potential of the logical challenge, partly to set limiting conditions to the argument, and
partly to be alert if the strength of the logical challenge is being claimed when the actual
argument is somewhat weaker—a strategy not unknown in educational discussions.
The rebuttal does seem plain: if it is impossible to transcend ideology what credence
can be given to the accounts claiming to characterize ideology in all its complexity and
subtlety? It is much more reasonable to suppose that to understand ideology, to be able
to characterize it, is at least to begin to recognize and to escape from it. Further, if some
people can give very full accounts of ideology then it is reasonable to assume there to be
a continuum, with complete and unconscious absorption at one extreme and relatively
conscious liberation or autonomy at the other, with all kinds of intermediate positions with
people conscious of some kinds of ideological pressures but ignorant or unconscious of
others. The quantitative and qualitative distribution of populations on such a continuum,
or more likely on a mesh of continua, could be the subject of empirical enquiry, albeit a
very difficult one. These things at present cannot be shown; but what is demonstrable is
the contradictory nature of asserting the impossibility of escape from ideology, since that
proposition can have no force, and barely any meaning, unless considered as itself extra-
ideological. This must apply, too, to any statements claiming to embody justifiable beliefs
of any kind about ideology.
Marxist writers appear quite often to acknowledge the truth of this in various ways,
though the significance of such an acknowledgement often appears to be missed. Two
contemporary Marxists, Reynolds and Sullivan, have no doubts that at least Marx himself
escaped:

Marx himself clearly believed that intellectuals such as himself could transcend the
relativism that results from class position and generate accurate accounts of the social
world and its nature. Marxist theoretical formulations were therefore presented in testable
form together with the evidence that generated them,41

and they assume, as I have done, that if Marx can do it so can at least some others; and they
argue, like Gramsci, for the possibility of doing this even on the basis of the curriculum
164â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
as it exists in capitalist social formations—but that is to run ahead. Reynolds and Sullivan
appear to reserve the capacity to transcend ideology for intellectuals, but, as Gramsci
reminds us:

homo faber cannot be separated from homo sapiens. Each man, finally, outside his
professional activity, carries on some form of intellectual activity, that is, he is a
‘philosopher’, an artist, a man of taste, he participates in a particular conception of the
world, has a conscious line of moral conduct, and therefore contributes to sustain a
conception of the world or to modify it, that is, to bring into being new modes of thought….
All men are intellectuals, one would therefore say: but not all men have in society the
function of intellectuals.42

A common distinction made in Marxist terminology is that between science on the one hand
and ideology on the other. ‘Science’ here, of course, does not refer to the physical sciences
alone but also, and indeed particularly, to the possibility of social, political and economic
science: systematic, evidential and logical enquiries of which Marxism would, presumably,
constitute a paradigm. Science, on this account, reveals inherent contradictions leading to
constant reappraisals, where-as ideology presses constantly towards coherence, cohesion
and consensus:

As opposed to science ideology has the precise function of hiding the real contradictions
and of reconstituting on an imaginary level a relatively coherent discourse which serves
as the horizon of agents’ experience;…its social function is not to give agents a true
knowledge of the social structure but simply to insert them as it were into their practical
activities supporting this structure.43

For Poulantzas to make these kinds of oppositions, of course, he must be supposing a

genuine possibility of discerning and justifying accounts of ‘real contradictions’ and ‘true
knowledge of social structure’. He must be so supposing not just because he asserts them
as possible, but because he is himself giving a supposedly justifiable account of how
things are as concerning ideology and science. Other Marxists have noted the difficulty of
presenting Marxism itself as credible unless its own valuative and epistemological claims
can be tested. Rachel Sharp, for example, claims that:

It follows logically from a Marxist theory of language and of ideology that it is both
possible and politically necessary to make judgments about the adequacy of one’s thought,
otherwise the grounds for Marxism itself and its epistemological validity disappear.44

Sharp shows the same concern for rational justification when she argues that a rational
debate does not involve the withholding of one’s own substantive point of view:

What it does entail is that the stance adopted is itself open to rational scrutiny, the basic
assumptions exposed for critical appraisal and the sequences in the discourse examined for
their logical consistency.45

Though perhaps it is more akin to faith than the rational temper when she so firmly
claims:
 The challenge of relativism, ideology and the stateâ•… 165
Historical materialism has little to fear in this respect. Precisely because it is a superior
mode of analysis, it can withstand rational appraisal and be confident when juxtaposed
with other systems of thought.46

Rational humanism reasserts itself, and liberal educators might prick up their ears, when
she says:

even within capitalist societies themselves there are moments of transcendence which,
whilst often reflecting capitalist societies’ contradictions, point to the possibility of moving
beyond them, in literature, art and music, in love and friendship and in the spontaneity, free
from ideology, of very young children.47

One might add: and in science, in mathematics and logic, or in biology and geography—but
this is to run ahead again. The point at the moment is to show that not only do Marxists as
a matter of fact go beyond ideology, but that the very integrity and justification of Marxism
rests on the presupposition of a framework of reason, logic and empirical testing that must
be assumed to be relatively free of ideology. Knowledge, or science in its broad sense,
rests upon the idea of justiflable belief, where ‘justifiable’ has a much stronger sense than
‘legitimated’. A liberal education, in my conception of it, would be essentially concerned
with justifiable beliefs, and therefore essentially concerned with diminishing the influence
of ideologies, as of other supersititions and mystifications. I have tried to show, so far, that
this is at the least a logical possibility. The hard challenge, therefore, is not a threat to my
conception of a liberal education.
The softer challenge is of a different kind and accords more with what most Marxist
writers are actually saying. This challenge, called softer here because it is not a matter of
logical necessity, addresses itself to the empirical possibility of practising a liberal education
and achieving the kind of liberation from ideology that I have said to be logically possible.
Here it is as if a Marxist critic were to say, ‘All right, I am not claiming that the liberal
education you describe, or the liberation to be achieved by it, is impossible to achieve in a
capitalist society, but I am saying that success is highly unlikely and that the great majority
of people will remain trapped in ideology.’ One point that must be made immediately is
that ahhough this challenge is addressed to empirical possibility it is not suggested that the
issue can be settled empirically. What is going on here is still a matter of judgment as to the
forces with which a liberal educator must contend and the possibility of overcoming them
to some degree. Neither challenger nor defender can actually set up empirical tests here
since the arena for such testing must eventually be history. Nevertheless the judgments we
make are important, since they affect our striving to influence history in one way rather
than in another. They are particularly important judgments for teachers to make. What
could be more demoralizing for a teacher than to come to understand ideology and believe
him or herself powerless against it?
I have already cited both a French Marxist, Althusser, and an Australian Marxist, Kevin
Harris, as claiming that teachers try to be liberal educators but without much chance of
success because of the system and the ideology within which they operate; and the first
step in a critical response to this challenge must be to admit the strength of the force acting
against the chances of successfully implementing a liberal education policy. As detailed in
166â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
the previous section ideological forces are both strong and pervasive, they tend increasingly
to be supported, sometimes overtly, by agencies of the state, and subtleties of incorporation
go massively unnoticed. Instrumental and increasingly technical approaches to educational
aims and curriculum content, as well as to teaching techniques and assessment procedures,
undoubtedly all act against the ideas I would wish to see practised. All this I do not deny.
Agreeing that this is the case, however, and that it is a situaion to be deplored, the
next step is to seek the most justifiable countervailing strategy. I say the most justifiable
strategy, rather than simply the one most likely to succeed, because it is no good freeing
people from an ideology, even partly, if what replaces that ideology is as bad or worse.
Let me consider briefly two possible countervailing strategies that are not, in my view,
justiflable. The first is the naive view, which Murdock and others appeared to hanker after
in the early 1970s, that all might be improved if schools recognized a working-class culture
as well as a middle-class culture and adapted the curriculum to it, or at least broadened
the cultural possibilities of the curriculum. The trouble with this argument is that it is very
difficult to point to features of working-class culture, in any distinctive sense, that are
not either trivially irrelevant (darts, football, brass-bands, pigeon-fancying), or themselves
features of cultural entrapment and ideological exposure (restricted language codes, over
use of television, work and neighbourhood-based social relations). It is easy enough to
give base and superstructure or other sociological explanations of why working-class
cultures are as they are, and why middle-class cultures have distinguishing features. It
is also possible to show why the embourgeoisement of the working classes, which some
predicted would accompany a rise in working-class living standards, has not taken place.
The more interesting point for our present purpose, is that middle-class, and to some extent
petit-bourgeois, culture, for whatever cause, appears to have more genuinely liberating
(ideology-transcending) possibilities in it than does working-class culture; and this
possibly explains why we find so many middle-class Marxists trying to tell workers how
exploited they are, from Marx and Lenin onwards to more recent products of the lycée, the
gymnasium and the grammar school and the university! What would have to be shown on
the ‘more working-class culture’ argument, is that such a culture contained more liberating
or ideology transcending elements within it. I simply do not believe this to be the case.
For reasons that are not too difficult to spell out, mainly concerned with privileged access
to knowledge and understanding that is more universal and humanistic, the opportunities
for liberation among the middle classes are greater than among the working classes, and
this has been recognized in campaigns for more equal access to liberal and universalistic
education. In one sense it is, of course, misguided to claim that middle-class culture is better
than working-class culture—it is simply that the former has more access to a liberating
universal culture. There appears to be some evidence that mainstream Marxists in England
recognize this, as Entwistle reports:

English Marxist educationists, for example, have put their energies into a campaign for
structural reform of the system along comprehensive lines and have not dismissed the
traditional curriculum as bourgeois and irrelevant to working class children…except for the
new radical Left (and some conservative educationists, e.g. G.H.Bantock in Britain) there
 The challenge of relativism, ideology and the stateâ•… 167
has historically been no insistence from Marxists upon replacing the traditional subject
curriculum with one focused upon ‘working-class culture’, whatever that might be.48

Another variant of the argument, which avoids the concept of working-class culture, is to
emphasize the alleged problematic nature of knowledge and the consequent equal validity of
pupils’ own commonsense knowledge with what Nell Keddie calls ‘classroom knowledge’.
Keddie’s paper49 is essentially a study of the link between teachers’ categorization of
pupils and the rigid conceptions of knowledge and ability held by teachers; but implicit
in her arguments is the assumption of the equal validity of alternative perceptions, beliefs
and classifications of knowledge, and this in turn reflects the general phenomenological
position of the ‘new sociology of education’ of the mid-1970s. Reynolds and Sullivan,
claiming to speak as traditional Marxists, strongly contest this view, which appears to
ignore the problem of ideology altogether:

Intellectuals have a role for Marxists in pointing out that many individuals’ common sense
understandings or constructions of reality are invalid, erroneous beliefs that are especially
damaging if they prevent people from seeing, through false consciousness, the nature and
causes of the social reality around them. The primacy and importance given to actors’
explanations within the new sociology of education is, then, a thoroughly unsocialist
method of analysis.50

Not only do Reynolds and Sullivan, as classical Marxists, appear to be valuing certain
elements of a normal capitalist education system because it can produce intellectuals
capable of transcending ideology, but because of its possibilities for working-class children
in linking them with historically evolved, universalistic, and liberating humanistic cultures.
In this they call in both Gramsci and Lenin as allies:

Antonio Gramsci echoes Lenin’s warning that a working-class culture is ‘theoretically

wrong and practically harmful’ in pre-socialist, Fascist Italy. He argues that a working-
class denied access to the humanistic rationality of the traditional scholastic mode itself
reinforces the ideology and political hegemony of the ruling class by its incapacity to
perceive that the social and economic relations of capitalism can be transcended.51

My own rejection of the possibilities of either working-class culture or individual

phenomenological views of knowledge effectively or justiflably countervailing dominant
ideologies, whilst not Marxist, coincides with the views of these writers. No learning is likely
to take place in a completely ideology-free environment, that would be too much to expect;
but some curricula, some teaching strategies and methods, will have more possibilities of
intellectual liberation than some others. This is precisely the liberal education claim.
If working-class culture and individual phenomenological approaches do not offer
much hope against ideology, neither does what might be called ‘counter-indoctrination’. To
counter the indoctrinatory elements of ruling-class ideology with indoctrination in support
of working-class aspirations might be acceptable if the issue were merely one of politics or
the class struggle, though even here the ultimate justification would be dubious. From my
own point of view such a strategy would be unacceptable because one set of mental chains
is simply exchanged for another set, with no real liberation taking place at all. It might
168â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
indeed be the case that to see the school as only a place in which the dominant ideology
operates is grossly to oversimplify, and a much more realistic account might be that the
school is a site of conflicting ideologies and indoctrinatory pressures, some of which,
for working-class children, come from the very conditions of working-class life outside
school. That this might be a source of counter-hegemony can give the liberal educator no
satisfaction unless the possibility of escape from all ideologies, all false consciousness,
all mystification is somehow increased. A better hope probably lies in the idea that if the
pupil is exposed to several conflicting ideologies the chance of him coming to see them as
ideologies is, perhaps, increased.
Unless we are completely cynical, and see education as never more than a tool of those
in power or those trying to obtain power, we should try to see how education can become a
genuinely liberating force. The liberation would in the first place be a liberation from what
we might call a genuine and undistorted ignorance, that of primitivism or childhood. This
is what a commonsense view of education has always been, and only the cynical or those
with vested interests will insist that this view is entirely naive. People can be prisoners of
simple ignorance, and education can release them. In our own time, however, education
can liberate us from the additional and more sophisticated forms of anti-knowledge as well.
If we admit all the possibilities and likelihoods of indoctrination, and if we acknowledge
the prevailing and dominant ideologies of capitalist states, then we must also recognize that
there is no escape from these distortions of the mind unless we pay heed to the genuinely
fundamental, the truly evidential and justifiable, and the real requirements of reason and
morality that I have claimed should shape our approaches to a liberal education. Ideology
trades on the force of the present and the particular; liberal education draws, or should draw,
on the longer memory and the wider imagination, on the universal and the humanistic, on
the genuinely intellectual advances in knowledge and understanding properly to be shared
by all humankind.
There are at least four reasons important enough to note for supposing the liberating
benefits of liberal education to be achievable even in an undeniable ideological context.
Firstly, we must note the impossibility of limiting the effects of the very studies
necessitated by the instrumental purposes of a capitalist economy. What I mean here is that
to teach pupils to read and to compute, to teach them even distorted history and selectively
emphasized geography, to teach them the methodology of the physical and the life sciences,
to introduce pupils to even conformist views of morality—to do all this, even within all
the restrictions of the constraining ideology, is nevertheless to sow the seeds of liberation.
Reading skills can be applied anywhere and readers can browse beyond the directed texts;
proofs requiring at least some logic can give a taste for reasoning and questioning; the
demonstration of historical or geographical ‘facts’ can show the possibility of alternative
views; practical science can rouse the enquiring mind; and the pressures of authority to
ensure conformity to its wishes can engender rebellion and questioning for justification.
Yet these skills, these attitudes and this knowledge are all required to achieve the purely
instrumental purposes, the preparation for work and citizenship, in a capitalist society.
In short, you cannot train people in the sophisticated knowledge and skills necessary to
function and to maintain the social relations of a capitalist economy and its accompanying
political system, without at the same time generating the very skills, knowledge and
 The challenge of relativism, ideology and the stateâ•… 169
understanding that can be turned critically and reflectively inward upon the system and its
ideology.
Secondly, we should note that this ought not to surprise any Marxist who espouses a
dialectical view of historical development, for the idea that forces for change are generated
by the inherent contradictions of a system is central to that view. The idea that certain modes
of production and the social relations consequent upon them give rise to certain educational
needs, and that the satisfaction of these needs has the further consequence of generating
critical and countervailing ideas that will in time act against the system, is almost a classical
example of dialectical materialism at work. Such an idea explains the fact, otherwise
difficult to explain, that critical minds do emerge from capitalist education systems, and
gives hope and support to those who seek to liberate their pupils from ideologies and other
mystifications. Such an idea suggests that the views of Kevin Harris and Louis Althusser,
mentioned earlier, are unduly pessimistic and fail to take account either of the dialectics of
change or of what Geoff Whitty calls ‘the empirical reality of schooling’.52
Thirdly, it must be emphasized that if these possibilities appear to exist even within
existing practice in capitalist schooling, they would exist much more strongly within a system
of liberal education as argued for in earlier chapters of this work. The reason for supposing
this to be the case is precisely because those rational concerns which are engendered as it
were reluctantly, half-heartedly and accidentally, in existing practice, would become the
very raison d’être of liberal education as here characterized. Reason, evidence and critical
reflection would no longer be the subordinate necessities of instrumental functioning,
but would become the essential components of the liberating understanding that a liberal
education aims at.
Fourthly, a liberal educator can take some comfort from the idea that Raymond
Williams has fed into the debate: namely the view that what he has called residual and
emergent forms of culture are not always incorporated into the dominant ideology and
provide lacunae within which potentially liberating and transcending notions can lodge and
multiply.53 There are many illustrations of what Williams means here. Literature admittedly
contains many forms supportive of the dominant ideology, giving an oversimplified view
of married family life, romance, heroism in war and generally exalting wealth acquisition
and financial success. But it is also the case that literature is the great medium of the
universal questioning of the human condition, the exploration of the possibilities of human
life and of the variety of human relationships. To help a child enter the world of literature is
to help him or her move away from the present and the particular to the wider imagination
and the greater variety of possibility. Precisely because children and young people read the
literature of the past they are put in touch with residual elements of culture which help them
to question the dominant assumptions of the present. The same can be said about drama, and
to a lesser extent about music and art. Activities of an aesthetic and creative kind reinforce
a universal concern for activities worthwhile in themselves and generate a questioning of
the dominant utilitarian ideology. Potters, sculptors, painters and art historians may appear
to pose no threat to the dominant ideology, and therefore escape the worst of incorporation,
but in the way I have indicated they are avenues of escape and transcendence and focal
points of questioning and subversion of establishment ideas: witness the part played by
writers and artists in revolutionary activity.
170â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
Emergent cultures may be seen in the present range of private hobbies and interests,
always ahead of and distinct from the apparatus of the state and the school. It is perhaps
more correct to say that most of these hobbies and interests have both emergent and residual
elements: they often embody traditions but their followers are alert to new technologies
which the market provides in response to the interest-generated demand—gardening
would be a good example of this. In the case of interest in electronics, computers and
micro-processors it might be more correct to speak of genuinely emergent cultures, though
whether the market leads or follows here might be more debatable.
The significance of the growing influence of private hobbies and interests goes much
further than their exemplification of residual and emergent cultures. The phenomenon
demonstrates a concern for activities valuable in themselves rather than for instrumental
or wealth-gaining reasons. Such interests are often foci of clubs and collectivities where
reason, autonomy, imagination and creativity are fostered and rewarded by significant
fraternity that is outside the dominant ideology. Most significantly these interests continue
many elements of a universalistic liberal education that would have no outlet in the paid
occupations of most people. I do not subscribe to the simplistic forms of the ‘education
for leisure’ lobby, but there is promise in the idea that if technology can reduce the need
for labour then we might have more time for educated and civilizing pursuits of intrinsic
worth, rather than having to spend long times in the diminishing, de-skilling and crudely
utilitarian context of the factory, office or shop. Such arrangements, of course, cannot grow
on the basis of a simple division between the employed and the unemployed; but even
here the hope of social arrangements to deal justly with diminishing labour need must
come from the pressures of a broadly educated population capable of imagining radically
different possibilities.
For all these reasons a truly liberal education remains the best hope against both primitive
ignorance with all its accompaniments of prejudice and superstition, and against the more
modern forms of anti-knowledge, embodied in ideology, that we have been considering.
The existence of dominant ideologies is a threat and a challenge to the possibility of a
liberal education, but this must be seen as a challenge to liberal educators to make education
genuinely liberating. This is precisely what my earlier chapters have been about.
All the foregoing might understandably be seen as an attempt to persuade those of a
socialist or Marxist viewpoint to see my account of liberal education as the best and most
justifiable.countervailing force against capitalist ideology, apart from direct political action
within or outside parliamentary forms. To some extent that is exactly the direction of my
argument, which is against the counsel of despair to be found in some left-wing writings.
The argument, however, is on a broader front and on more general principles than that.
This is for two main reasons. Firstly, the argument says to the left-wing view not only
that liberal education stands as a countervailing force to capitalist indoctrination, but that
it also stands against any attempt at left-wing indoctrination, because it acts against all
non-evidential, non-rational, non-universalistic forms of education. Secondly, the liberal
educator says to those of other political persuasions: you have nothing to fear from liberal
education if you genuinely believe your views to be justifiable and rational. We would
state this as a principle that has wide application, since it applies not only to political but
to religious groupings: to the extent that a political or other view is held by its supporters
to be rationally justifiable its supporters should have no reason to fear liberal education.
 The challenge of relativism, ideology and the stateâ•… 171
Indeed, to the extent that any particular group, party or sect does fear liberal education and
its connection with reason and autonomy, then the views of that group, party or sect must
be suspect as to their justification.
It is now necessary to look more closely at what might be called the providers of liberal
education. I shall limit myself to some fairly brief observations about the part of the state in
the concluding section of this chapter, and then consider the position of the liberal educators
themselves, the teachers, in the final chapter.

10.6 The state and liberal education

I make no attempt in this section to give a full analysis of the relation between the state and
liberal education. My purpose is the more limited and purely prescriptive one of asserting
briefly what such a relationship should be, given that the state claims to be democratic and
the type of education we are considering is the liberal general education characterized and
justified in earlier chapters. The questions here are of two broad kinds: firstly, what is the
justification of the state providing and in some sense controlling education, as against other
claims to deny to the state such power and influence? Secondly, what are the limits to state
control of education? It will be seen that the answers to these two broad questions are very
closely connected.
We have already noted that the state has increased its power over educational provision
and policy in this country, and is now increasing its power and influence over the content
and methodology of education. We have also noted that this can be a mixed blessing which
on the one hand has undoubtedly made education more widely available, but on the other
hand has tended to make education more monolithic and more likely to serve ideological
hegemony. All this is matter of fact, but I am now more concerned with what ought to be
the case. Should the state have such power over education, or is there something to be said
on behalf of the counter-claimants?
The two main counter-claimants, though not entirely forming two clear camps, are those
who claim rights for parents to send their children to entirely private (independent) schools
financed out of fees or in other ways independent of public finance, and those who call
themselves ‘de-schoolers’ and seek the abolition of schools in the normal sense altogether.
Both of these counter-claims rest to a greater or lesser extent on the alleged rights of parents,
though this is more explicit in the former than in the latter. I shall not give expositions of
the two views here, since the arguments are familiar to most people and can be easily read
elsewhere.54 The position I am maintaining is as follows: rights are extremely difficult to
characterize and to uphold, and in any case are often contradictory. For example, if parents
can be said to have rights, then so can children, and some of the children’s rights could be
held to be rights against parents, as Bruce Ackerman argues.55 It is less confusing to argue
the case in terms of duties. Parents, it is true, have certain duties and responsibilities towards
their children. The collective adult community, the state in its collectively sovereign sense,
also has duties and responsibilities towards all the young of the community. These duties,
those of parents individually and of all adults collectively, include on my account the
moral responsibility of ensuring that all youngsters are helped towards a moral and rational
autonomy, because to do anything other is to foreclose on some possibilities of choice and
therefore to fail to respect youngsters as persons or potential persons. The duties of the
172â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
state, and the duties of parents are thus the same in respect of education. Because of the
practical difficulties on the one hand, and the possibilities of inequality and injustice on the
other if there were no central provision or control of education, there is some justification
for the state in its executive aspect acting as agent for the state in its collective, adult
community, sovereign aspect, in providing and to some extent controlling education for all
the young of that country. This, however, does not give the state, in its executive aspect,
unlimited rights. The duty is a clear one, that is to provide, maintain and support a general,
liberal education of something like the kind I have described, or of some other form that
can be justified in terms of liberation, rationality and autonomy. The state must provide
what Entwistle has happily called ‘disinterested schooling’. Entwistle refers to Gramsci’s
argument that the school should be basically disinterested:

By this he (Gramsci) seemed to have at least two things in mind. First, that the schooling
of children should not be vocational in the sense of providing technical or professional
training…thus the school should be disinterested as to the future occupational destiny of
the child. But, second, the humanistic culture of the school should enshrine the traditional
academic values of objectivity, pluralism…, rationality—the disinterested pursuit of
knowledge.56

To the extent that the state fails to provide this kind of education, or actively promotes
some other kind—say, vocational training or political indoctrination—to that extent its
rights in the matter are abrogated, its justification for commanding obedience collapsed.
It might be argued, as against the view just outlined, that provided a government is
properly elected its powers cannot be limited in the way described, and that it could claim
a right to control or to de-control education in any way that the electorate did not object to
by turning the government out of office. This may have force in constitutional law, but little
in logic or morality. The force of a majority mandate has been much exaggerated in modern
conceptions of democracy, and can lead to considerable tyranny, as Hayek has pointed
out.57 It is much more reasonable to suppose that a government elected to office within
democratic forms is bound to uphold the presuppositions of those forms, namely, certain
assumptions about the autonomy of individuals, reason, freedom of inquiry and debate,
and the proper adherence to argument rather than to force. These presuppositions are more
important than the temporary will of the majority, since they underpin—give coherence
to—any particular representative arrangements; and they should therefore provide
the limits necessary to prevent a tyranny of the majority. To put this another way: both
democracy and liberal education presuppose the same respect for persons and for reason.
It would therefore be inconsistent and incoherent for a democratically elected government
to impose a form and content of education which was not based on the development of
rational autonomy in some full and plain sense. For any particular democratic government
to recognize an obligation to provide and defend liberal education, therefore, does not rest
upon any majority mandate, but rather upon the much more profound and fundamental
roots of the political forms of which it is but a temporary part.
On this argument the executive state might allow other agencies to run schools if they
too were run on genuinely liberal education lines, and this necessarily would require
inspection and the satisfying of certain standards of content and methodology. Whether
 The challenge of relativism, ideology and the stateâ•… 173
the state justifiably allowed such private and independent ventures in education, even if
genuinely liberal, would depend upon other aspects of government policy concerning
economic and social equality; but this raises issues beyond my present intentions. What
would not be justifiable, on my account, would be to allow the provision of schools of
a religious denominational kind where the pupils were to be educated and trained into
a predetermined set of beliefs and attitudes, simply because these were the beliefs and
attitudes of their parents. The right to provide such schools, or even to have them provided,
is sometimes claimed on the basis of tolerance and pluralism; but this again is a confused
point of view since the toleration appealed to is to be extended to the parents who then
impose a rigid and intolerant control over the future of their children. Any believer in
tolerance, like any believer in democracy, must favour the provision and protection of a
liberal education. To favour or allow other kinds, whereby some youngsters are excluded
from liberal education, is to subvert the very roots of democracy and tolerance.
In order to exercise the function of providing and defending liberal education the
state must employ administrative officials and, of course, liberal educators—that is to
say, teachers who see themselves and are seen by others to be liberal educators. My final
chapter will be concerned with the role of such teachers.
 11
Teachers, assessment and accountability

The theme of this my concluding chapter is a simple one. It is to argue that teachers in
a system of state-provided general and compulsory education should owe their major
professional loyalty to the ideals of a liberal education as laid out here, and have the
capacity, training and education to practise the methods and strategies of liberal education.
It is, secondly, to claim that examinations, assessments and other testing procedures
in schools should primarily be to monitor and evaluate the general achievement of the
objectives of liberal education, and to serve the diagnostic purposes of such an education,
rather than to serve the selective purposes of employers and higher education. Thirdly, the
chapter will argue that a moral accountability model which stresses the autonomy of the
teacher is appropriately applied to teachers as liberal educators, rather than a conception of
accountability in which teachers are seen as employed simply to serve the needs of society
as perceived variably from time to time by governments and other providing agencies.

11.1 Teachers as liberal educators

For reasons which are not always made clear in any general sense people employed as
teachers are often expected to engage in tasks which impossibly extend their role. To list
only the more important areas of competence expected from teachers, apart from that
of teaching, is most revealing. Teachers to start with (I take the British case throughout)
must be collectively responsible in a school for the general management of the school
and for the organization, discipline and control of the pupils. So much is this taken for
granted that to list it as my first addition to the role of the teacher will surprise most
readers. Nevertheless it is an addition, and it is a function which generates many difflculties
in the way of liberally educating and many diversions from it. A teacher has no sooner
demonstrated his or her excellence as a teacher, for example, than much of that teacher’s
time and energy is diverted into responsibilities of an organizational or managerial kind
which do not need teaching expertise to carry out. Further to this, the confusion of teaching
role with control and custodial roles spreads to the understanding of the pupil. The more
successful the teacher is, as a liberal educator, in achieving aims of neutral and evidential
exposition, concern for the pupil’s autonomy, and so on, the more this will clash with
the teacher’s exercise of authority as organizer, controller and manager. One has only
to work with teachers on in-service courses to hear how often this kind of role conflict
is a source of genuine worry and debilitating tension. In initial training the first fear of
student teachers is not whether they will be able to teach children anything, but whether
they will be able to control their pupils. Head teachers, those in charge of schools, need
to be financial and public relation experts, problem consultants, fund-raisers, personnel
managers and employment agencies—so much so that it is not surprising if the claims
 Teachers, assessment and accountabilityâ•… 175
of liberal education are seen as almost hopelessly idealistic to them as compared to their
control and managerial functions. All these problems have undeniably increased as the
size of schools has increased and as pressures of economy and financial stringency have
appeared on the scene with every sign of staying there.
I state the problem here because of my concern with its effects on the possibilities of a
liberal education, not because I have instant solutions. I am inclined to think that we are
wrong to try to solve this problem by extra courses for ‘upper and middle management’
and by providing class teachers with better control techniques. My own reasoning is all
in the direction of leaving good teachers free to teach, recognizing teaching as important
and rewarding it accordingly. At the moment we tend to attach further organizational
responsibilities to promotion possibilities and career advancement, almost as though being
a good teacher was considered insufficient. This is to devalue the most important and
central competency of the liberal educator.
Nor is this all, since ordinary class teachers are expected to do many other things besides
teaching. Counselling and what is now popularly called ‘pastoral care’ are expected of all
teachers, again without any very convincing reasons as to why this should be so. Confusion
of role abounds again in this area. Of course pupils must be cared for in schools, and of
course they must be appropriately advised. The appropriate care and advice that teachers
might be expected to give, however, is limited both by the expertise and by the purposes
of teachers, and very rightly so. It is ironical that nowadays teachers are expected to give
advice on all kinds of personal and social matters, on career choices, on health, on personal
relationships and family life-styles and leisure activities, yet seem not really expected to
have either individual or collectively professional views on the nature of the education they
are providing. An expertise appears to be expected of teachers in all kinds of areas in which
they are not trained and could not possibly be trained, whilst any claim to expert knowledge
about the nature, content and methodology of a compulsory and universal education is
greeted with suspicion against the claims of government, employers and parents. As a
recipe for confusing and demoralizing teachers and imposing a pre-determined amateurism
and incompetency on them, little more harmful could have been devised.
Teachers, as liberal educators, badly need a narrowing of focus and the will to resist
extensions of role and dilutions of purpose. Their job is to liberally educate the nation’s
young people. To do that teachers need to be free to get on with the job within a framework
largely determined by themselves acting collectively as liberal educators. Managing,
organizing, counselling, career advice and many aspects of in-school caring, necessitated
or merely made convenient by the presence of large numbers of young people in one
institution, could and should be carried out in very large part by other people, specially
trained and able to form appropriately different relationships with young people from those
appropriate to teachers and their pupils.
What I have said here should not be pushed to reductio ad absurdum. Of course teachers
must do such organizing, managing, advising and caring as is a necessary part of and
accompaniment to teaching. It is because this is the case that all the extensions of role
that I have been criticizing have found such ready and willing subjects. Teachers should
have a sharp sense, however, of the limits of their professional purpose and competence;
and they should be sensitively aware of the point where the role extensions take over and
the time, energy and thought devoted truly to the purposes of liberal education start to be
176â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
diminished. Nor should we be too much impressed by what some few persons of exceptional
energy, will and intellect can achieve across all these broad areas. Their achievements are
positively harmful if it is supposed that all teachers of average competence can emulate
them. That way lies frustration and failure for many who on a narrower front could have
been reasonably efficient.
Even if teachers are left free to teach, as I am advocating, there is still the question of
what they teach. Not all that can be taught is taught for the purposes or in the style of liberal
education. Little need be said here about this matter since earlier chapters have discussed it.
I have said that liberal education need not be all that goes on in a school, and this remains
true. There is room for all kinds of voluntary activities which schools can conveniently
provide, both for their pupils of school age and for adults in the community; and within the
bounds of morality and safety I see no reason why this provision should not be based on
demand and the available skills and facilities. The major task of the teachers, however, is
to provide as full as possible a pattern of liberai education for pupils of compulsory school
age, and this demanding task will take most of their time, their thought and their energy.
The two main temptations likely to divert teachers, in terms of content and method,
away from their proper liberal education task are those of instrumentality and specialism.
The temptation and pressure of instrumentality has already been discussed but little has
so far been said about specialism. In a way specialism is itself a form of instrumental or
vocational preparation because the unstated assumption is that the pupils will themselves
become teachers or researchers in the subject area. The content and style of such teaching
looks less narrowly vocational because the subject looks liberal—i.e. it might be history,
literature or physics. Nevertheless the assumptions behind the teaching are that the
students are aspiring to be historians, literary critics or physicists, that they will take public
examinations in those fields, go to universities, and in due course either work to extend
knowledge of the particular field or, by teaching, initiate others into these lines of inquiry.
Specialism is, of course, necessary to a cultured and civilized society. We do need people
to carry on the specialized study and teaching of discrete areas of knowledge and inquiry.
It does not follow from this, however, that there is any public obligation to train all young
people as specialists, or even very large numbers of them; the general justification of the
provision of a universal and compulsory system of liberal education does not extend to this
at all, and different justifications would be needed to determine what training should be
provided, for whom, and at whose expense. This all goes beyond my present concerns and
arguments, but a second point about specialism is more pertinent.
People who have themselves been trained as specialists in subject areas often become
teachers in secondary schools of liberal and general education. Because of their background,
training and personal interest they often find it difficult to think of themselves as liberal
educators, seeing themselves rather as having a major loyalty to mathematics, literature,
history or whatever. Pupils are then taught, in terms of content and method, as though they
too are future specialists, the teaching of the multitude who will not go on to university
being largely determined by the requirements of those who will. Thus the specialist training
appropriate to post-compulsory education gets pushed down into the compulsory period
to the detriment of liberal education. Again the complaint must not be misunderstood.
Specialist teachers are needed in schools of liberal education in the sense that teachers with
 Teachers, assessment and accountabilityâ•… 177
specialist knowledge are needed. Such teachers, however, must also be liberal educators.
They must see their subjects in the light of liberal education, that is to say:
(i) as illuminating and being illuminated by other subject areas,
(ii) as serving the methodological purposes of a liberal education in terms of evidential
teaching, concern for reason, and the development of and respect for pupil autonomy,
and
(iii) as not making exclusive claims to ‘proper’ knowledge or making excessive claims on
pupils’ time and energy in the light of the wide demands of liberal education.
In other words, within the period of compulsory education at least, though teachers may
need to be specialists they should not be trying to turn their pupils into specialists. Their
first duty is to liberally educate.

11.2 The functions of assessment in liberal education

Examinations and assessments at present perform a great variety of functions in British
education, few of them to do with the purposes of a liberal education. The three common
public examinations: GCE ‘O’ level, CSE and GCE ‘A’ level, are widely used by employers
and by universities and other institutions of higher and further education for selection
purposes. In the case of employers any relationship between the achievements indicated
by the examination results and the aptitudes, knowledge and understanding required by
the employers is usually remote. Internal examinations in schools are often, though not
exclusively, practices for the public examinations or indicators of suitability for them, and
thus modelled largely on them. This pattern broadly dominates the examination system. It
is norm-based, essentially competitive, and compares pupils with other pupils rather than
indicating anything at all precise or informative about the pupil’s understanding.
The present examination system also encourages the early specialization into a narrow
range of subjects that is so inimical to a broadly based liberal education. It is of course
true that many pupils at age 16 take a broad and humane mixture of ‘O’ level or CSE
subjects, and it is also true that pupils study subjects other than those they are taking for
examination purposes. Nevertheless, the very importance of examination success forces
some pupils to concentrate on a smaller number of subjects than would be advisable in
terms of liberal education; and the very same importance tends to devalue in the minds of
pupils and teachers any studies not leading to examinations. At the Advanced GCE level
the range is usually quite narrow and attempts to revise the system to encourage a wider
range of studies between age 16 and 18 has been constantly resisted by the universities.1
There is another way in which the present system does not well serve the purposes
of liberal education. This is in the actual nature of examinations, which in spite of many
attempts at reform remains largely that which rewards memory and the regurgitation of
material acquired from school courses and textbooks. Again because of the importance
of the examinations, and the way success in them is assessed, many teachers will claim
that they simply do not have time to nurture in pupils the qualities of evidential thinking,
imagination and independence that should be the hallmarks of the liberally educated.
Indeed, the examination system is especially pernicious in its effects upon parents and
pupils, who are quick to argue that if a course of study does not prepare the pupil either
178â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
for a job or an examination then it cannot be worthwhile, and who are suspicious of any
teaching methods or learning methods likely to complicate the readiness of an approved
response.
It is perhaps too much to claim that the present system of examination and assessment
is wrong in any absolute sense. It seems to satisfy the universities and employers, though I
am inclined to think that far too heavy a price is paid for that satisfaction. My more modest
complaint, serious enough in this context, is that the present system does not and cannot
serve the purposes of the liberal educator.
Such purposes do have monitoring, evaluating, assessing and diagnostic implications.
Whenever aims and intentions are given, as they are in any clearly thought-out and
accountable system of liberal eduction, then teaching and learning must be monitored in
some way to see whether the aims are being met and the intentions carried out, both in
general and in the case of individual pupils. The purpose here is nothing to do with the rank
ordering of pupils, and nothing to do with grading or declaring some pupils to have passed
and others to have failed. It has everything to do with finding out, over given content areas,
whether and to what extent pupils are coming to appreciate evidence, use argument, make
and extend cognitive and conceptual relationships and care about reason, other persons,
and for what is worthwhile. The point, in any given pupil’s case, is not how the pupil
compares with others, but how the pupil compares with what he or she could understand,
know, reason about, imagine, care about or create a month ago, a year ago or whatever.
The general point is the range of such cognitive and dispositional advance that we are
able to achieve over the total number of pupils. The criteria are personally dynamic, not
interpersonally comparative.
As in other things I have discussed, it should be the task of those who need to select—
employers, universities, institutions of higher and further education, grant awarders, and
so on—to devise their own tests and procedures to select efficiently in terms of what they
need to satisfy their purposes. Liberal educators should then be free to tackle responsibly
the task of efflciently monitoring their own achievements on their own criteria, without the
constant difficulty of using instruments of selection and comparison to guide educational
purposes.
Most textbooks on the curriculum2 seem to agree that educational assessment and
evaluation should relate to educational purposes, not other purposes, and they offer a simple
model in which educational aims are evolved from which objectives are determined and
learning-teaching experiences designed to achieve such objectives. The learned outcomes
are then assessed and the aims, objectives and particularly the teaching modified if
necessary in the light of the evaluation. This is correct in its location within the purposes of
education but over-simplified in a number of respects. Teaching and learning arrangements
cannot be seen simply as means to the achievement of certain desirable outcomes, at least
not in a liberal education, because the teaching and the learning must themselves satisfy
certain criteria of the kind desscribed in Chapter 8. The whole procedure cannot be one
in which only outcomes are judged, especially if the outcomes are to be characterized in
behavioural or performance terms. The purposes of liberal education are far better served
by something like Lawrence Stenhouse’s insistence on all procedures satisfying certain
criteria and standards implicit or explicit in the general educational purposes.3 Simple
 Teachers, assessment and accountabilityâ•… 179
behaviourism will not serve liberal education with all the latter’s emphasis on what goes
on in the mind of the pupil.
Though perhaps more difficult to construct and less familiar than ordinary examinations,
it is possible to assess against the criteria required by liberal education. Changes in attitudes
and dispositions can be measured;4 it is possible to come closer to the revelation of a
person’s real understanding than conventional examinations do;5 imagination and creativity
are assessable;6 and the use of evidence, reason and argument can certainly be judged.
Instruments for the careful diagnosis of individual difficulties in reading and elementary
mathematics are well established and exist in other learning areas as well. Because of our
insistence on the individual nature of understanding and on the importance of individualized
learning techniques there is a great need in liberal education for a wide development of
individual diagnostic testing methods which guide both pupil and teacher in the best next
step forward to enhanced understanding.
Above all, and to use the current terminology, testing for liberal education purposes
needs to be criterion-referenced and not norm-referenced.7 That is to say, pupils and
teachers in liberal education do not much need to know how a pupil compares with other
pupils. Rank orders, standard scores, percentiles and the like offer no real aid to liberal
educators and their pupils. What they need to know, in the case of pupil Jane, say, is what
Jane knows and understands; how Jane reasons, uses evidence and argues; and what Jane
cares about. All this needs to be known against criteria of what is understandable and
knowable in certain areas of inquiry; against established criteria of reasoning, the use of
evidence and argument; and against judgments of the appropriateness and worthwhileness
of certain kinds of caring and of certain objects of caring.

11.3 Teacher accountability and liberal education

It has become a matter of growing concern, as the importance of education and schooling
has grown in people’s minds, that schools and teachers should be accountable in some
way. This has sometimes been taken to mean that teachers should be seen to be doing what
others would have them do. For example: that they should teach a core curriculum laid
down by an agency of government; that they should turn out products capable of satisfying
the country’s manpower requirements; that they should help pupils adapt themselves to a
technological society; or that they should persuade youngsters to come to terms with our
particular version of the mixed economy. Others, of course, have seen a different location
of accountability, not to central or local government authority so much as to the local
community, where this is seen in terms of the wishes of local parents and employers.
A theory of liberal education must accept the general idea of the accountability of
teachers, but it cannot accept an oversimplified version of accountability in which all
is satisfactory if teachers are seen to be doing what they are told to do by others. The
reason for the inadequacy of this view for the liberal educator should be apparent. A liberal
educator must be accountable only in the sense that he or she is acting professionally as a
liberal educator, and cannot be held accountable for not satisfying aims, or not achieving
objectives which are themselves inimical to the purposes of a liberal education.
The conception of accountability to be argued for here, therefore, is that of the
relatively autonomous teacher, actively involved as a liberal educator, and accountable as
180â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
a professional expert in the field of liberal education. Such a teacher would be accountable
in the main to his or her own informed conception of the role of liberal educator. The only,
but important, sense in which accountability extends and is characterized beyond this are,
firstly, the sense in which the teacher should explain to others—pupils, parents, employers
and government authorities—what he or she is trying to do and why, secondly, the sense in
which it should be shown publicly that what is attempted is being achieved; and, thirdly,
the sense in which professional consensus should be sought and reasonable cooperation
maintained with professional colleagues. These conditions of an accountability appropriate
for liberal educators might conveniently be listed as:
(i) the moral autonomy condition,
(ii) the explaining and justifying condition,
(iii) the public evaluation condition, and
(iv) the professional cooperation condition.
It is perhaps worth noting here the similarity of this description of accountability to our
normal sense of moral responsibility. To be morally responsible I have to be basically
autonomous, self-governed, but I am also expected to give reasonable explanations and
justifications of my actions, to show that I am doing what I say I am doing, and to engage in
reasonable cooperation with my fellows. Moral action is accountable action; professional
action is accountable action; but accounts of both only make sense where the agent is
considered to be autonomous, and neither make sense where the agent is considered
as simply doing what others tell him. Accountability necessarily involves and does not
contradict autonomy. What it does contradict is a refusal to give an account of one’s actions
or to cooperate with others.
To be autonomous in the sense intended here is to be governed by oneself rather than by
others. It has sometimes been made to sound as if ‘autonomous’ meant doing simply and
selfishly what one felt like doing, instead of being governed at all. It cannot be emphasized
too strongly that no serious advocate of the importance of autonomy has ever meant
this. What governs the autonomous person is not feeling but reason.8 This is particularly
important when it is teacher autonomy that is at issue. An autonomous teacher would be
governed in his professional decisions by the professional exercise of his own reason, not
by whim, impulse or feeling. Such a teacher would take proper advice, heed the needs and
concerns of pupils and other appropriate people and take into account relevant knowledge
and research. He would do all these things because that is what it would be to exercise
reason in the making of decisions. What an autonomous teacher could not do, and retain
autonomy, would be to consider the teacher’s role simply as that of agent for someone
else’s decision-making, especially where such another was not a professional educator.
This is not to say, of course, that the autonomous teacher would necessarily be opposed to
authority or the rule of law. Neither of these, however, can be overriding for an autonomous
teacher, since both must be subject to justification and a framework of consent, whether we
are talking about the law of the land or the framework of rules and authority within a given
institution such as a school or an education system. How things are decided in a school, for
example, makes a great deal of difference as to whether a teacher can exercise and develop
professional autonomy without frustration.
 Teachers, assessment and accountabilityâ•… 181
Autonomy, moral or professional, depends to a considerable extent upon knowledge.
An autonomous teacher would try to resist the pressures of political and other groups in
so far as they appeared to be unreasonable. This could only be done with awareness of,
and understanding of, such pressures. Similarly, the autonomous teacher would not follow
the promptings and urgings of a non-rational and unconscious id or super-ego in so far as
these seemed incompatible with what it appeared reasonable to do. Autonomy requires
the existence of a strong and healthy autonomous ego, in Freudian terms, where reason
can flourish relatively unhindered and undistorted.9 This, too, would depend upon the
knowledge and understanding of the existence and power of non-rational forces within the
self. Thus teacher autonomy requires knowledge, both in the basic sense of understanding
the forces acting against reason, socially and individually, and in the more particular sense
of professional knowledge, understanding and skill. All this emphasizes the links—the
necessary links—between morality, rationality, autonomy and liberal education which
have been the themes of this work. Liberal education is seen here as a rational and moral
enterprise where those already at least relatively autonomous help others gain the knowledge
and understanding they need in order to become as autonomous as possible themselves.
The possibility of autonomy increases as the opportunity for observing and imagining
alternatives increases, since to be autonomous in decision-making a person must be able
to imagine alternative courses of action and choose between them. This is an extremely
important consideration for those who educate and train teachers. A teacher rigidly trained
in a narrow conception of what it is to teach will find great difficulty in making autonomous
decisions and adjustments in a rapidly changing social and technological environment.
Another way to approach the problem of teacher accountability is to note the ambiguity
surrounding the words ‘accountability’ and ‘responsibility’. The ambiguity arises because
of the bi-polarity of reference the two words have. One can be responsible or accountable for
something and/or to somebody, and confusion arises because of a failure to indicate which
significance is to be given emphasis. In normal usage the emphasis of either significance
can be implied. A soldier might be responsible to his immediate superior in the sense that
he is required to do exactly as the superior says. At the other extreme I can be considered
responsible for my actions in a moral sense with no clear indication of being responsible to
anyone for them. Not only are these differences of emphasis, but they oppose one another
because the more responsible I am to another person in the sense of working strictly to that
person’s orders, the less I am morally responsible for my actions in any other sense than
that of simple obedience. The converse also obtains: the more I am morally responsible
or accountable for my actions the less it is reasonable to expect me to be responsible or
accountable to anyone else in the sense of simply obeying them; though it might indeed be
reasonable to expect me to give an account of, explain or justify my actions, if only to show
publicly that I am acting in a morally responsible way.
The view taken here, then, is that indeed teachers within liberal education must be
accountable, but this accountability should emphasize the ‘responsibility for’ significance
of the term. Such teachers are responsible for the liberal education of their pupils.
They are responsible for, and therefore accountable for, helping pupils to become more
generally rational and autonomous, with all the connotations of involvement in knowledge
and understanding that this entails. To do this liberal educators must rely on their own
professional knowledge and education. The criteria they bring to bear upon their own
182â•… Beyond the Present and the Particular: A Theory of Liberal Education
actions and those of their colleagues must derive from their own understanding of what it
is to involve others in a general and liberal education. The responsibility and accountability
to be exercised here is clearly more of the moral kind and less of the obedience kind; more
of the accountability for kind and less of the accountability to kind; more dependent upon
a preparation for autonomous teaching and less dependent upon a preparation in specific
skills approved of and decided by others.
Accountability in this sense clearly presupposes that the person to be thought of as
accountable is also to be thought of as autonomous. A person not autonomous cannot
be accountable in this sense. More correctly, since autonomy is not an all or nothing
characteristic but rather a matter of degree, the more autonomous a person is the more
accountable in this sense that person can be, and the less autonomous a person is the less
accountable that person can meaningfully be. Only relatively autonomous teachers can
logically be called upon to explain, justify or give an account of their actions, since if they
are not autonomous it is their directors who must give an account, explain and justify. Only
relatively autonomous teachers need submit themselves to reasonable evaluation, since if
they are not autonomous it is the commands of their directors that need evaluation. Only
relatively autonomous teachers can seek agreement by reasonable cooperation with their
peers, their professional colleagues.
Teachers with these kinds of loyalties, understandings and dispositions will only be
produced, of course, by appropriate kinds of professional education and training, and I
have tried to give an account of what is desirable here in another place.10 It is perhaps worth
ending this attempt to construct a theory of liberal education, however, by emphasizing the
importance for liberal education of teacher training and education. Even in an ideal situation,
where there is consensus about the need for liberal education and adequate monetary
and material provision for it, and where no inappropriate assessment system distorts
the purposes of liberal education, the skills, knowledge, understanding and attitudes of
teachers would be of crucial significance in the successful pursuit of the purposes of liberal
education. In the actually prevailing situation, where the politically and socially dominant
attitudes seem inclined to instrumentally directed education rather than to the liberating
form advocated here, where the provision of money and resources is far from generous,
and where examinations and incentives all pull away from liberal ideals, the situation is
far worse. Here only teachers trained and educated themselves in the justification, content
and appropriate methodology of a liberal education are likely to defend those elements of
such an education to be found in the existing system and to work and argue for an extension
of liberal content and methods. Without convinced teachers nothing much can be done
about liberal education even in a favourable climate. Where the teachers are convinced
liberal educators, however, much may be defended, and much developed and expended
even where political and social climates are generally unhelpful; and from such committed
teachers, from their work and their attitudes, can come a change of view in society at large,
which surely cannot live on instrumentality alone for ever. Such at least is the hope.
 Notes and references

Chapter 1
Introduction—theory and education
1 K.R.Popper, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge, London,
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963 and later editions.
2 P.H.Hirst, Educational Theory, in J.W.Tibble (ed.), The Study of Education, London, Routledge
& Kegan Paul, 1966, p. 48.
3 P.H.Hirst, op.cit, p. 55.

Chapter 2
Education and its justification
1 A.Quinton, The Nature of Things, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973, p. 144.
2 S.I.Benn and R.S.Peters, Social Principles and the Democratic State, London, Allen & Unwin,
1959, ch. 15.
3 See T.K.Abbott’s translation of Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason, London, Longmans, 1909,
p. 69: ‘In the order of efficient causes we assume ourselves free, in order that in the order of ends
we may conceive ourselves as subject to moral law…freedom and self-legislation of will are
both autonomy.’
4 For a clear exposition, see B.Magee, Popper, London, Woburn Press, 1974, ch. 4.
5 R.S.Peters, ‘Aims of Education—A Conceptual Inquiry’, in R.S.Peters (ed.), The Philosophy of
Education, Oxford University Press, 1973.
6 R.S.Peters, op.cit., p. 55.
7 See, for example, comments by J.Woods and W.H.Dray in R.S.Peters (ed.), op.cit.

Chapter 3
Types of education
1 Ministry of Education, Half Our Future: A Report of the Central Advisory Council for Education
(England), London, HMSO, 1963, para. 100.
2 P.H.Hirst, Knowledge and the Curriculum, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974, pp. 30–53.
3 P.H.Hirst, ‘Liberal Education’, in L.C.Deighton (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Education, vol. 5,
New York, Macmillan and Free Press, 1971. For Aristotle see Politica, trans. B.Jowett, Oxford,
Clarendon Press, 1921, Book VII, cc. 13–17 and Book VIII, cc. 1–7.
4 E.Fromm, The Sane Society, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1956, p. 69.
5 R.S.Peters, ‘The Justification of Education’, in R.S.Peters (ed.), The Philosophy of Education,
Oxford University Press, 1973.
6 P.H.Hirst, Knowledge and the Curriculum, op.cit., pp. 30–53.
7 For an expansion of these ideas see Jonathan Bennett’s excellent little monograph, Rationality,
London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1964. See also C.Bailey, ‘Morality, reason and feeling’, in
Journal of Moral Education, vol. 9, no. 2, 1980, pp. 114–21.
8 P.H.Hirst, Knowledge and the Curriculum, op.cit., p. 22.
184â•… Notes and references
Chapter 4
The justification of liberal education
1 B.Blanshard, Reason and Goodness, London, Allen & Unwin, 1961, p. 427.
2 P.H.Hirst, Knowledge and the Curriculum, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974, p. 43.
3 M.Wertheimer, Productive Thinking, New York, Harper, 1945.
4 B.Blanshard, op.cit., ch. 5.
5 P.H.Hirst, op.cit., p. 43.
6 Ibid., pp. 42–3.
7 B.Crittenden, Education and Social Ideals, London, Longmans, 1973, p. 49.
8 H.J.Paton, The Moral Law, London, Hutchinson, 1961, p. 88 and p. 96.
9 I.Kant, The Metaphysical Principles of Virtue, trans. James Ellington, Indianapolis, Bobbs-
Merrill, 1964, p. 108.

Chapter 5
Some preliminary ideas
1 A.O’Hear, Education, Society and Human Nature, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981,
p. 116.
2 R.Barrow, Common Sense and the Curriculum, London, Allen & Unwin, 1976, p. 147.
3 Department of Education and Science and the Welsh Office, The School Curriculum, London,
HMSO, 1981, p. 2.
4 T.Devlin and M.Warnock, What Must We Teach?, London, Temple Smith, 1977.
5 For examples of philosophical analyses of the concept of knowledge, usually with more emphasis
on the truth condition than I have given, see I.Scheffler, The Conditions of Knowledge, Glenview,
Illinois, Scott Foresman, 1965; A.D.Woozley, Theory of Knowledge, London, Hutchinson, 1949;
and K.Lehrer, Knowledge, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1974.
6 J.S.Mill, Essay on Liberty, (ed. R.B.McCallum), Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1946, pp. 30–1.
7 Ibid., pp. 38–9.
8 M.Boden, Artificial Intelligence and Natural Man, Brighton, Harvester Press, 1977.
9 There are many convenient accounts of Piaget’s work. A good one is J.H.Flavell, The
Developmental Psychology of Jean Piaget, Princeton, Van Nostrand, 1963.
10 For accounts of the idea of coherence, see N.Rescher, The Coherence Theory of Truth, Oxford,
Clarendon Press, 1973, pp. 31–40. Less technically in B.Blanshard, The Nature of Thought,
London, Allen & Unwin, 1939, vol. 2, pp. 264–9.
11 B.Blanshard, op.cit., p. 266 footnote.

Chapter 6
Three accounts considered
1 P.H.Hirst, Knowledge and the Curriculum, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974, p. 43.
2 Ibid., p. 41.
3 Ibid., p. 39.
4 Ibid., p. 40.
5 Ibid., p. 39.
6 Ibid., p. 40.
7 Ibid., p. 64.
8 Ibid., p. 66.
9 Ibid., p. 85.
10 Ibid., p. 46.
 Notes and referencesâ•… 185
11 Ibid., p. 46.
12 Ibid., p. 46.
13 Ibid., p. 51.
14 P.H.Hirst and R.S.Peters, The Logic of Education, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970,
p. 63.
15 P.H.Hirst, op.cit., p. 86.
16 Ibid., p. 87.
17 Hirst and Peters, op.cit., p. 63.
18 Ibid., p. 64.
19 Hirst, op.cit., p. 66.
20 For the debate mentioned, see P.H.Hirst, ‘Literature and the Fine Arts as a Unique Form of
Knowledge’, in Cambridge Journal of Education, vol. 3, no. 3, 1973, and ‘Reply to Mr. Peter
Scrimshaw’, in Cambridge Journal of Education, vol. 4, no. 1, 1974. Also P.Scrimshaw,
‘Statements, Language and Art’, in Cambridge Journal of Education, vol. 3, no. 3, 1973.
21 Hirst, Knowledge and the Curriculum, op.cit., p. 87.
22 J.R.Martin, ‘Needed: A New Paradigm for Liberal Education’, in J.F.Soltis (ed.), Philosophy and
Education, 80th Year Book, NSSE, University of Chicago Press, 1981.
23 Hirst, Knowledge and the Curriculum, op.cit., p. 96.
24 For a brilliant critique of various stages in the development of the verificationist theory of
meaning, see B.Blanshard, Reason and Analysis, London, Allen & Unwin, 1962, ch. 5.
25 L.Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans, G.E.M.Anscombe, Oxford, Basil Blackwell,
1967, pp. 1 le-12e.
26 M.Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. J.Macquarrie and E.Robinson, Oxford, Basil Blackwell,
1978, p. 209.
27 M.Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art’, in D.F.Krell (ed.), Martin Heidegger: Basic
Writings, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978, pp. 143–88.
28 P.Phenix, Realms of Meaning, New York, McGraw-Hill, 1964, p. 21.
29 Ibid., p. 21.
30 Ibid., p. 21.
31 Ibid., p. 25.
32 Ibid., p. 25.
33 Ibid., p. 25.
34 Ibid., p. 24.
35 Ibid., p. 252.
36 Ibid., p. 25.
37 Ibid., p. 28.
38 Ibid., p. 277.
39 P.H.Hirst, Knowledge and the Curriculum, op.cit., p. 62.
40 Ibid., p. 61.
41 Ibid., p. 62.
42 P.Phenix, op.cit., p. 7.
43 P.H.Hirst, Knowledge and the Curriculum, op.cit., p. 63.
44 Ibid., pp. 63–4.
45 P.Phenix, op.cit., preface.
46 Ibid., preface.
47 Ibid., p. 5.
48 Ibid., p. 7.
49 Ibid., p. 7.
50 Ibid., p. 270.
186â•… Notes and references
51 J.P.White, Towards a Compulsory Curriculum, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973.
52 J.P.White, The Aims of Education Restated, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982.
53 P.S.Wilson, Interest, Discipline and Education, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971.
54 J.P.White, Towards a Compulsory Curriculum, op.cit., p. 20.
55 Ibid, p. 21.
56 Ibid., pp. 21–2.
57 Ibid., p. 22.
58 Ibid., p. 21.
59 Ibid., p. 23.
60 Ibid., p. 26.
61 Ibid., pp. 27–9.
62 In connection with the issue of compulsory competitive games, see C.Bailey, ‘Games, Winning
and Education’, in Cambridge Journal of Education, vol. 5, no. 1, 1975.
63 J.P.White, Towards a Compulsory Curriculum, op.cit., p. 35.
64 Ibid., p. 55.
65 Ibid., p. 57.
66 J.P.White, The Aims of Education Restated, op.cit., 1982, p. 52.
67 Ibid., p. 124.
68 Ibid., p. 122.
69 J.Kovesi, Moral Notions, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967, ch. 5.

Chapter 7
The content of a liberal education
1 M.Oakeshott, ‘Education: the Engagement and its Frustration’, in The Proceedings of the
Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain (now the ‘Journal of Philosophy of Education’),
vol. 5, no. 1, 1971. As will be seen I have made much use of the illuminating ideas of Michael
Oakeshott in this chapter. He, of course, bears no responsibility for the use I have made of his
ideas, which he himself might well consider a misuse.
2 M.Oakeshott, On Human Conduct, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1975, pp. 12–13.
3 Ibid., p. 55.
4 Ibid., p. 59.
5 Ibid., p. 59.
6 See, of course, the many works of Piaget himself. Those not familiar with these might consult
J.H.Flavell, The Developmental Psychology of Jean Piaget, Princeton, Van Nostrand, 1963, and/
or M.Boden, Piaget, Brighton, Harvester Press, 1979.
7 A brief summary and convenient bibliography of Edward de Bono’s work is to be found in his
About Think, London, Jonathan Cape, 1972.
8 The basic ideas are to be found in J.S.Bruner, Towards a Theory of Instruction, Cambridge,
Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1966; but all Bruner’s writings contribute greatly to
the ideas of liberal education.
9 M.Oakeshott, On Human Conduct, op.cit., p. 5.
10 For the thrust of the views I am opposing here see P.S.Wilson, Interest, Discipline and Education,
London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971, and M.Bonnett, ‘Authenticity and Education’, in
Journal of Philosophy of Education, vol. 12, 1978.
11 For a discussion of possible approaches to political education see B.Crick and A.Porter (eds),
Political Education and Political Literacy, London, Longman, 1978. There has been much,
perhaps overmuch, discussion of indoctrination in the literature of philosophy of education.
 Notes and referencesâ•… 187
See, for example, I.A.Snook (ed.), Concepts of Indoctrination, London, Routledge & Kegan
Paul, 1972.
12 For a recent report on the teaching of mathematics see the Report of the Committee of Inquiry
into the Teaching of Mathematics in Schools under the Chairmanship of Dr W.H.Cockcroft,
Mathematics Counts, London, HMSO, 1982.
13 For suggestions of a liberal view of moral education see C.Bailey, ‘Moral Education’, in
R.Whitfield (ed.), The Disciplines of the Curriculum, New York, McGraw-Hill, 1971. A slightly
revised version is to be found in C.Bailey, ‘Moral Education in a Pluralistic Society’, in Epworth
Review, vol. 5, no. 2, May 1978.
14 For a good recent advocacy of the importance of the arts in schools see the report of an advisory
committee under the chairmanship of Peter Brinson, The Arts in Schools, London, Calouste
Gulbenkian Foundation, 1982.
15 C.Bailey, ‘Games, Winning and Education’, in Cambridge Journal of Education, vol. 5, no. 1,
1975.
16 M.Oakeshott, On Human Conduct, op.cit., p. 13.
17 Interesting thoughts concerning man’s relationship to his technology are to be found in, for example,
E.F.Schumacher, Small is Beautiful, London, Sphere Books, 1974; and in a more complex way
in M.Heidegger, ‘The Question Concerning Technology’, in D.F.Krell (ed.), Martin Heidegger:
Basic Writings, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978. For the two examples of proposals for
science content mentioned in the text see R.Ingle and A.Jennings, Science in Schools—Which
Way Now?, University of London Institute of Education, 1981, Appendix 5.1: and Department of
Education and Science, Curriculum 11–16, London, HMSO, 1979, pp. 28–9.
18 P.S.Wilson, op.cit.
19 M.Bonnett, op.cit.

Chapter 8
The methods of a liberal education
1 See this work, section 4.5.
2 A.Quinton, The Nature of Things, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973, ch. 6.
3 B.Blanshard, Reason and Goodness, London, Allen & Unwin, 1961, ch. 15.
4 A.Quinton, op.cit., pp. 143–9.
5 For a feel of the recent debates see I.A.Snook (ed.), Concepts of Indoctrination, London,
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972.
6 See J.P.White, ‘Indoctrination and intentions’, in I.A.Snook (ed.), op.cit.
7 Ministry of Education, Half Our Future, London, HMSO, 1963.
8 S.Brown, J.Fauvel and R.Finnegan, Conceptions of Inquiry, London, Methuen in association
with the Open University Press, 1981. Apart from the reference I have made this is a most useful
book for liberal educators.
9 R.M.Travers (ed.), Second Handbook of Research on Teaching, Chicago, Rand McNally, 1973.
10 T.F.Green, The Activities of Teaching, New York, McGraw-Hill, 1971, ch. 7.
11 Ibid., p. 7.
12 J.Passmore, The Philosophy of Teaching, London, Duckworth, 1980, p. 210.
13 There is a helpful selection of Dewey’s writings in F.W.Garforth (ed.), John Dewey: Selected
Educational Writings, London, Heinemann, 1966.
14 J.Passmore, op.cit., p. 210.
15 I.Kant, The Metaphysical Principles of Virtue, (Part II of ‘The Metaphysics of Morals’), trans.
James Ellington, Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill, 1964, p. 128.
188â•… Notes and references
16 C.Bailey and D.Bridges, Mixed A bility Grouping: A Philosophical Perspective, London, Allen
& Unwin, 1983, esp. chs 3, 4 and 5.
17 This emphasis on caring for what is worthwhile is well caught in the writings of R.S.Peters. See
especially his ‘Education as Initiation’, in R.D.Archambault (ed.), Philosophical Analysis and
Education, New York, Humanities Press, 1965, p. 110:

To be educated is not to have arrived at a destination; it is to travel with a different view.

What is required is not feverish preparation for something that lies ahead, but to work with
precision, passion and taste at worthwhile things that lie to hand.
Also in his ‘Aims of Education—A Conceptual Inquiry’, in R.S.Peters (ed.), The Philosophy of
Education, Oxford University Press, 1973, p. 18:

A hallmark of a good school is the extent to which it kindles in its pupils a desire to go on
with things into which they have been initiated when the pressures are off and when there
is no extrinsic reason for engaging in them.
18 J.Passmore, op.cit., p. 184.
19 B.Blanshard, op.cit., ch. 15.
20 R.M.Hare, Language of Morals, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1952, and Freedom and Reason,
Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1963.
21 C.Bailey, Theories of Moral Development and Moral Education, unpublished Ph.D. thesis,
University of London, 1974, chs 10 and 12.
22 M.Hoffman, ‘Moral Development’, in P.Mussen (ed.), Carmichael’s Manual of Child Psychology,
New York, John Wiley, 1970, vol. 2, pp. 261–360.
23 J.Klein, Samples from English Cultures, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965, especially
vol. 2, Child Rearing Practices.

Introduction to Part III

1 M.Young and G.Whitty, Society, State and Schooling, Barcombe, Falmer Press, 1977, p. 11.

Chapter 9
The challenge of economic utility
1 Mr James Callaghan, then Prime Minister, made such charges in his speech at Ruskin College,
Oxford, on 18 October 1976. The charge that schools pay insufficient attention to respect
for industry and wealth creation was made by Mrs Shirley Williams, then Secretary of State
for Education, in 1977 and more stridently by Conservative politicians and by groups like
Understanding British Industry ever since.
2 Department of Education and Science, Teacher Training and Preparation for Working Life,
HMSO, 1982, p. 1.
3 Ibid., p. 1.
4 Department of Education and Science, Education in Schools: A Consultative Document, London,
HMSO, 1977, p. 7. For a criticism of this publication see C.Bailey, ‘A Strange Debate: Some
Comments on the Green Paper’, in Cambridge Journal of Education, vol. 8, no. 1, 1978.
5 DES, Education in Schools, p. 7.
6 Ibid., p. 2.
7 Department of Education and Science, A Framework for the School Curriculum, London, HMSO,
1980, p. 8.
 Notes and referencesâ•… 189
8 Department of Education and Science, HMI Series: Matters for Discussion 11, A View of the
Curriculum, London, HMSO, 1980, p. 15.
9 Department of Education and Science, Circular No. 6/81, 1 October 1981.
10 Department of Education and Science, The School Curriculum, London, HMSO, 1981, p. 3.
11 Ibid., pp. 12–13.
12 Ibid., p. 13.
13 Ibid., p. 18.
14 Schools Council, Working Paper 70: The Practical Curriculum, London, Methuen Educational,
1981.
15 Report by Mark Jackson, Times Educational Supplement, London, 19 November 1982, p. 6.
16 Further Education Curriculum Review and Development Unit, A Basis For Choice, London,
HMSO, 1979.
17 Ibid., p. 23.
18 A consistent critic of the behaviourist view was Lawrence Stenhouse. See particularly his An
Introduction to Curriculum Research and Development, London, Heinemann, 1975, chs 5, 6 and
7. For a particular criticism of skills approaches in social education see B.Davies, From Social
Education to Social and Life Skills Training: In Whose Interest?, Leicester, National Youth
Bureau, 1979.
19 Further Education Curriculum Review and Development Unit, Vocational Preparation, London,
HMSO, 1981, p. 36.
20 Report by Mark Jackson, Times Educational Supplement, London, 3 December 1982.
21 ‘Times Educational Supplement’, 10 December 1982.
22 ‘Times Educational Supplement’, 18 February 1983, p. 13.
23 Council for Science and Society, New Technology: Society, Employment and Skill, published by
the Council, London, 1981, pp. 7–8.
24 To confirm this brief assertion readers might look at: J.Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Oxford,
Clarendon Press, 1972; A.Gewirth, Reason and Morality, Chicago, University of Chicago Press,
1978; and B.Ackerman, Social Justice in the Liberal State, New Haven, Yale University Press,
1980.
25 E.Fromm, The Sane Society, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1956.
26 R.S.Peters, Ethics and Education, London, Allen & Unwin, 1966, pp. 225–226.
27 Council for Science and Society, op.cit., p. 89.
28 DES, The School Curriculum, p. 3.
29 Council for Science and Society, op.cit., p. 77.
30 Schools Council, op.cit., p. 22.
31 Ibid., p. 22.
32 Ibid., p. 22.
33 Council for Science and Society, op.cit., pp. 23–4.
34 R.Jonathan, ‘The manpower service model of education’, in Cambridge Journal of Education,
vol. 13, no. 2, 1983, p. 9.
35 Schools Council, op.cit., p. 23.
36 Ibid., p. 23.
37 R.Jonathan, op.cit., pp. 8–9.
38 B.Davies, op.cit., p. 11.
39 Ibid., p. 10.
40 R.Jonathan, op.cit., p. 8.
41 Ibid., p. 9. The whole of Ruth Jonathan’s paper is an excellent case against the trends criticized
in this chapter. For another form of criticism against skills approaches see P.Atkinson, T.L.Rees,
190â•… Notes and references
D.Shore and H.Williamson, ‘Social and Life Skills: The Latest Case of Compensatory Education’,
in T.Rees and P.Atkinson (eds), Youth Unemployment and State Intervention, London, Routledge
& Kegan Paul, 1982.

Chapter 10
The challenge of relativism, ideology and the state
1 M.F.D.Young (ed.), Knowledge and Control, London, Collier-Macmillan, 1971.
2 A label used by many following the publication of Knowledge and Control; see for example
D.A.Gorbutt, ‘The New Sociology of Education’, in Education for Teaching, November 1972.
3 T.S.Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1970.
4 B.Bernstein, ‘On the Classification and Framing of Educational Knowledge’, in M.F.D.Young
(ed.), op.cit.
5 G.M.Esland, ‘Teaching and Learning and the Organization of Knowledge’, in M.F.D.Young
(ed.), op.cit.
6 M.F.D.Young (ed.), op.cit., p. 7.
7 Ibid., p. 23.
8 Ibid., p. 75.
9 See P.L.Berger and T.Luckman, The Social Construction of Reality, Harmondsworth, Penguin,
1967.
10 `See C.W.Mills, The Sociological Imagination, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1959; and I.Horowitz
(ed.), Power, Politics and People: The Collected Papers of C.Wright Mills, London, Oxford
University Press, 1969.
11 T.S.Kuhn, op.cit.
12 M.F.D.Young (ed.), op.cit., p. 77.
13 On general philosophical issues of subjectivity, objectivity and relativism see: B.R.Wilson (ed.),
Rationality, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1970; R.Trigg, Reason and Commitment, Cambridge
University Press, 1973; M.Hollis and S.Lukes (eds), Rationality and Relativism, Oxford, Basil
Blackwell, 1982; and J.W. Meiland and M.Krausz (eds), Relativism, Cognitive and Moral, Notre
Dame and London, University of Notre Dame Press, 1982.
14 P.H.Hirst, Knowledge and the Curriculum, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974, p. 44.
15 Ibid., p. 92.
16 See K.R.Popper, Objective Knowledge, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1973, especially chs 3 and 4.
17 See almost any recent work on mainstream epistemology; e.g. K.Lehrer, Knowledge, Oxford,
Clarendon Press, 1974; and R.Nozick, Philosophical Explanations, Oxford, Clarendon Press,
1981, chapter on Knowledge and Skepticism.
18 A classic is B.L.Whorf, Language, Thought and Reality, edited with an introduction by J.B.Carroll,
Cambridge, Massachusetts, MIT Press, 1956. A useful and more recent work with an extensive
bibliography is R.Needham, Belief, Language, and Experience, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1972.
19 For a proper expansion of this over-simple summary see F.Copleston, A History of Philosophy,
London, Burns Oates, 1963, vol. VII, part I, Post-Kantian Idealist Systems.
20 A.Schutz and T.Luckman, The Structures of the Life-World, trans. R.M.Zaner and H.T.Engelhardt
Jnr, London, Heinemann, 1974, p. 3.
21 M.F.D.Young (ed.), op.cit., p. 3.
22 Ibid., p. 5.
23 See Marcuse’s account of ‘Technological rationality’ in ch. 5 of his One Dimensional Man,
London, Sphere, 1968.
 Notes and referencesâ•… 191
24 See L.Althusser, ‘Freud and Lacan’, in Lenin and Philosophy, trans. B.Brewster, London, New
Left Books, 1971. See also references in R.Sharp, Knowledge, Ideology and the Politics of
Schooling, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980, pp. 98, 106 and 115.
25 L.Althusser, ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses’, in Lenin and Philosophy, op.cit.,
p. 146.
26 K.Harris, Education and Knowledge, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979, p. 164.
27 L.Althusser, op.cit., p. 147.
28 K.Harris, op.cit.; see for example p. 129: ‘education, given the circumstances of a liberal
democratic society, is concerned to create easily satisfied “pigs”; and it is concerned to promote
a pernicious type of ignorance rather than to overthrow ignorance.’
29 See as perhaps a naive example of this: G.Murdock, ‘The Politics of Culture’, in D.Holly (ed.),
Education or Domination, London, Arrow, 1974.
30 R.Williams, ‘Base and superstructure in Marxist cultural theory’, in New Left Review, 82,
December 1973. Reprinted in R.Dale, G.Esland and M.MacDonald (eds), Schooling and
Capitalism, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul with the Open University Press, 1976, p. 205
(page refs to Dale et al.).
31 Ibid., p. 205.
32 Ibid., p. 205.
33 Ibid., p. 205.
34 K.Harris, op.cit., p. 154.
35 L.Althusser, op.cit., p. 148.
36 See S.Baron et al. (Education Group: Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies), Unpopular
Education, London, Hutchinson in association with the Centre for Contemporary Cultural
Studies, University of Birmingham, 1981, pp. 39–40.
37 R.Sharp, Knowledge, Ideology and the Politics of Schooling, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1980, p. 158.
38 N.Poulantzas, Political Power and Social Classes, trans. T.O’Hagan, London, New Left Books
and Sheed & Ward, 1973, p. 215.
39 M.W.Apple, Ideology and Curriculum, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979, p. 128.
40 R.Williams, op.cit., pp. 206–7.
41 D.Reynolds and M.Sullivan, ‘Towards a New Socialist Sociology of Education’, in L.Barton,
R.Meighan and S.Walker (eds), Schooling, Ideology and the Curriculum, Barcombe, Lewes,
Falmer Press, 1980, p. 178.
42 A.Gramsci, Selections from Prison Notebooks, edited and translated by Q.Hoare and G.N.Smith,
London, Lawrence & Wishart, 1971, p. 9.
43 N.Poulantzas, op.cit., p. 207.
44 R.Sharp, op.cit., p. 145.
45 Ibid., p. 167.
46 Ibid., p. 167.
47 Ibid., p. 167.
48 H.Entwistle, Antonio Gramsci: Conservative Schooling and Radical Politics, London, Routledge
& Kegan Paul, 1979, p. 95.
49 N.Keddie, ‘Classroom Knowledge’, in M.F.D.Young (ed.) op.cit.
50 D.Reynolds and M.Sullivan, op.cit., p. 179.
51 Ibid., p. 187. My emphasis.
52 G.Whitty, Ideology, Politics and Curriculum, Unit 8 of Course E353: Society, Education and the
State, Milton Keynes, Open University Press, 1981, p. 10.
53 R.Williams, op.cit., pp. 206–7.
192â•… Notes and references
54 For a careful consideration of the issue of independent schooling see B.Cohen, Education and the
Individual, London, Allen & Unwin, 1981, ch. 4. See also A.N.Gilkes, Independent Education,
London, Victor Gollancz, 1957. For the de-schooling arguments see the useful collection of
articles made by Ian Lister, Deschooling: A Reader, Cambridge University Press, 1974. See
also I.D.Illich, Deschooling Society, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1973; E.Reimer, School is Dead,
Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1971; and P.Goodman, Compulsory Miseducation, Harmondsworth,
Penguin, 1971.
55 B.Ackerman, Social Justice in the Liberal State, New Haven and London, Yale University Press,
1980, ch. 5.
56 H.Entwistle, op.cit., pp. 91–2.
57 F.A.Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1960, chs. 7:
e.g. p. 106:
The dogmatic democrat feels, in particular, that any current majority ought to have the
right to decide what powers it has and how to exercise them, while the liberal regards it as
important that the powers of any temporary majority be limited by long term principles.

Chapter 11
Teachers, assessment and accountability
1 As witness the fate of the Schools Council ‘N and F’ proposals which involved lengthy and
thorough study and research, would have widened the curriculum for most 16–18-year-old
pupils, but were rejected mainly because of opposition from universities. See Schools Council
Working Paper 60: Examinations at 18+: the N and F Studies, London, Evans Brothers and
Methuen Educational, 1978. As an example of the opposition see University of Cambridge
Local Examinations Syndicate, The N and F Proposals: Comments on The Report to the Schools
Council, May 1978.
2 See, for example, H.Taba, Curriculum Development, New York, Harcourt, Brace & World, 1962,
ch. 19; D.K.Wheeler, Curriculum Process, University of London Press, 1967, ch. 10; D.Pratt,
Curriculum Design and Development, New York, Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1980, part 3.
3 L.Stenhouse, An Introduction to Curriculum Research and Development, London, Heinemann,
1975, chs 5, 6 and 7.
4 See, for example, A.N.Oppenheim, Questionnaire Design and Attitude Measurement, London,
Heinemann, 1966.
5 By discussion, for example.
6 For an extensive bibliography see J.Freeman, H.J.Butcher and T.Christie, Creativity: A Selective
View of Research, 2nd edition, London, Society for Research in Higher Education, 1971.
7 On criterion-referenced assessment see S.Brown, What Do They Know? A Review of Criterion-
Referenced Assessment, Edinburgh, HMSO, 1980; and S.Brown, Introducing Criterion-
Referenced Assessment: Teachers’ Views, Stirling Educational Monographs no. 7, Department of
Education, University of Stirling, 1980.
8 For reasons why this should be so see C.Bailey, ‘Morality, reason and feeling’, in Journal of
Moral Education, vol. 9, no. 2, 1980, pp. 114–21.
9 And for a more detailed treatment of this idea see C.Bailey, Theories of Moral Development and
Moral Education: A Philosophical Critique, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of London,
1974, chs 5 and 9.
10 C.Bailey, ‘Education, accountability and the preparation of teachers’, in Cambridge Journal of
Education, vol. 13, no. 2, 1983. Some material in this chapter draws on this article.
 Index

accountability, 236–40 Copleston, F., 250

Ackerman, B., 226, 249, 252 cosmology, 130, 131, 132
aesthetic appreciation, 34, 35, 73, 97 craft and design, 121, 124, 125, 132
Althusser, L., 208, 212, 218, 251 Crick, B., 245
animals, 131, 132 Crittenden, B., 41, 42, 242
Anscombe, G.E.M., 244 ‘Curriculum—11–16’ (HMI), 172;
Apple, M.W., 251 A Framework for the School—(DES), 169,
Archambault, R.D., 247 248;
art, 73, 76, 77, 97, 121, 124, 125, 132 The Practical—(Schools Council), 171, 172,
assessment, 233–6 248;
astronomy, 130, 131, 132 The School—(DES), 50, 170, 242, 248, 249;
authenticity, 132 A View of the—(HMI), 169, 172, 248
autonomy, 25, 96, 101, 131, 236–40, 241
dance, 118, 121, 126, 132
Bailey, C., 245, 246, 247, 253 Davies, B., 186, 248, 249
Bantock, G.H., 220 de Bono, E., 141, 245
Baron, S., 251 Department of Education and Science (DES),
Barrow, R., 50, 242 50, 169, 248, 249
beliefs, 137–47, 200 Devlin, T., 51, 242
Berger, P.L., 196, 250 Dewey, J., 150, 247
Bernstein, B., 194, 250 discovery learning, 31, 32
Blanshard, B., 30, 31, 155, 242, 243, 244, 246, dispositions, 102, 103, 112, 113, 157, 161, 235
247 drama, 125, 132
Boden, M., 63, 243, 245
Bonnett, M., 245, 246 ecology and conservation, 131, 132
Bridges, D., 247 economics, 118, 121, 122, 132
Brinson, P., 245 economic utility, 167–91
Brown, S., 246, 253 Education for Capability (RSA), 175, 176
Bruner, J., 141, 245 Einstein, A., 1
Butcher, H.J., 253 energy resources, 131, 132
Entwistle, H., 220, 252
Esland, G., 194, 195–200, 250
Callaghan, J., 248
examinations, 233–6
careers education, 99, 167–91
explanation, 141, 148–52, 159
caring, 102, 152–60;
about others, 157;
about reason, 154–7 Fauvel, J., 246
child-centred education, 132–5 Finnegan, R., 246
Christie, T., 253 Flavell, J.H., 243, 245
Cockcroft, W.H., 246 food and nutrition, 131, 132, 146
Cohen, B., 252 Freeman, J., 253
communities of discourse, 84 Fromm, E., 242, 249
competition, 180, 209 fundamentality, 22, 23, 51–3, 75
compulsion, 100, 101, 119 Further Education Curriculum Development
cookery, 31, 97, 146 Unit, 173, 174, 248, 249
194â•… Index
games, 97, 121, 126, 132 and respect for persons, 12–14
generality, 22, 23 justificatory arguments for liberal education,
geography, 131, 132 28–46;
Gewirth, A., 249 the ethical argument, 40–6;
Gilkes, A.N., 252 the general utility argument, 29–35;
Goodman, P., 252 the transcendental argument, 35–40, 79
government, 46, 225–8
Gramsci, A., 209, 210, 216, 220, 221, 226, 251, Kant, I., 13, 43, 152, 156, 201, 242, 247
252 Keddie, N., 220, 252
Green, T.F., 148, 247 keyboard skills, 113, 132
Gulbenkian Foundation, 246 Klein, J., 160, 247
knowledge, 53–9, 69, 96, 103, 187–90;
Hare, R.M., 157, 247 forms of, 71–82;
Harris, K., 208, 209, 215, 218, 251 and information, 53, 54;
Hayek, F., 227, 252 and mind, 69;
health and medicine, 131, 132 social construction of, 200–2;
Hegel, G.F., 196 sociology of, 193–205
Heidegger, M., 82, 244, 246 Knowledge and Control, 193–205
Her Majesty’s Inspectors (HMI), 167, 168, 169 Kovesi, J., 103, 245
Hirst, P.H., 3, 36–40, 68–82, 87–90, 106, 120, Krausz, M., 250
198, 241, 242, 243, 244, 250; Krell, D.F., 244
criticism of, 74–82 Kuhn, T.S., 194, 196, 250
history, 73, 98, 117, 121, 132
Hoffman, M., 159, 160, 247 language, 111, 132
Hollis, M., 250 Lehrer, K., 242, 250
Holly, D., 251 liberal education and assessment, 233–6;
human biology, 129, 132 challenges to, 163–227;
humanities, 116–18, 171 characterized, 19–26, 28–9, 49;
human nature, 83, 118 content of, 105–35;
Husserl, E., 196 and general education, 72, 79, 163;
and ideology, 214–25;
ideology, 163, 164, 205–25 the integrative idea of, 107;
Illich, L, 252 logical divisions of, 72–82, 108–10;
indoctrination, 142, 143, 161 methods of, 136–61;
Ingle, R., 129, 246 and relativism, 202–5;
instrumental education, 17–19, 27, 28, 167–91; and the state, 225–8
characterized, 17–19 liberation, 20–2, 76, 77, 139, 189, 222–5
interest, 131–5 Lister, L, 252
intrinsic value, 23, 94, 95 literature, 73, 98, 117, 125, 132, 223
Luckman, T., 186, 250
Jackson, M., 248, 249 Lukes, S., 250
Jennings, A., 129, 246
Jonathan, R., 185, 187, 249 Macquarrie, J., 244
justifiable beliefs, 56–62, 137, 147, 202, 218 Manpower Services Commission, 172, 174, 179
justification, 7, 11–16, 99, 100, 200, 201, 202, Marcuse, H., 203, 204, 251
218; Martin, J.R., 78, 243
of education, 14–16; Marx, K., 130, 196, 209, 219
of liberal education, 27–45; Marxism, 163, 200, 201, 205–25
and majority opinion, 11, 12; mathematics, 73, 97, 121, 123, 132, 171
 Indexâ•… 195
meaning, 70, 80, 81, 83–6; Quinton, A., 11, 139, 194, 241, 246
and intention, 81, 82;
Phenix’s classification of, 86; rationality, 43, 75, 83, 137, 203–5
and true propositions, 71, 80, 81; rational life, 42
verificationist theory of, 70, rational mind, 69, 70
Meiland, J.W., 250 rational temper, 155
meteorology, 131, 132 Rawls, J., 249
Mill, J.S., 60, 61, 139, 140, 243 reason, 24–6, 154–7, 203–5, 223;
Mills, C.Wright, 196, 203, 250 caring for, 154–7, 158
mixed ability grouping, 4, 247 reasoning, logical, 111
moral education, 118, 121, 246 Reimer, E., 252
morality, 118, 121, 123, 132 relativism, 153, 193–205
moral judgments, 73 religion, 73, 76, 77, 84, 98, 116, 121, 123, 132
motivation, 131–5 religious education, 117
Murdock, G., 251 Rescher, N., 243
music, 97, 121, 125, 132 respect for persons, 12–14, 42
Reynolds, D., 216, 220, 251
Needham, R., 250 rights and duties, 41, 42, 43
Newsom Report (Half Our Future), 146, 246 Robinson, E., 244
Nozick, R., 250 rote learning, 32
numeracy, 111, 132

Scheffler, I., 242

Oakeshott, M., 108, 109, 245, 246 Schumacher, E.F., 246
objective value, 93, 132, 152 Schutz, A., 196, 250
O’ Hear, A., 50, 242 science, 31, 73, 97, 127–32, 171
Oppenheim, A.N., 252 Science and Society, Council for, 177, 178, 181,
orders of inquiry, 108 183, 184, 249
Scrimshaw, P., 243
parents, 44, 45, 159 serving competencies, 110–15, 132
Passmore, J., 150, 153, 154, 247 Sharp, R., 212, 213, 217, 251, 252
Paton, H.J., 242 skills, 99, 144, 173, 182–7
Peters, R.S., 15, 16, 24, 190, 241, 242, 247, 249 Snook, I.A., 245, 246
Phenix, P., 68, 71, 83–93, 120, 244; social sciences, 73
criticism of, 87–93 Stenhouse, L., 179, 248, 252
philosophy, 73, 77, 97, 98 subjective theory of value, 68, 93, 153
physical activities, 121, 126 Sullivan, M., 216, 220, 251, 252
physical education, 112, 121, 132
Piaget, J., 141, 245
Pippard, B., 129 Taba, H., 252
politics, 118, 121, 132 teachers as liberal educators, 229–33
Popper, K., 1, 13, 80, 198, 241, 250 teaching for care, 152–60, 161;
Porter, A., 245 for evidence, 137–42, 161, 190;
Poulantzas, N., 213, 217, 251 for understanding, 147–52, 161, 190
practical activities, 99, 144–7, 171 technical education, 130, 172, 175, 181
practices, 109, 118–27 technology, 122, 130, 131, 177, 178
Pratt, D., 152 theory, 1–7;
propaganda, 143, 144, 161 critical value—, 6;
pupil choice, 132, 133 educational—, 2–7;
puzzlement, 150–2 and practice, 1–7
196â•… Index
Times Educational Supplement, 172, 174, 248, Wertheimer, M., 32–4
249 Wheeler, D.K., 253
training, 121, 123, 144–7, 161, 172–7, 180–2 White, J.P., 68, 93–104, 244, 245;
Travers, R.M., 246 criticism of, 99–104
Trigg, R., 250 Whitfield, R., 246
Whitty, G., 164, 223, 248, 252
understanding, 53, 62–7, 107, 127, 115–26, Whorf, B.L., 250
130, 147–52, 158, 161, 187–90, 235 Williams, R., 211, 214, 223, 251, 252
Williams, S., 248
Wilson, B.R., 250
virtues, 102 Wilson, P.S., 94, 131, 244, 245, 246
vocational education, 18, 19, 27, 28, 50, 172–7, Wittgenstein, L. 81, 244
190 Woozley, A.D., 242

Warnock, M., 51, 242 Young, D., 172, 173, 175

wealth creation, 171, 179 Young, M.F.D., 164, 195, 203, 248, 249, 250